The experiment was a failure and yet it hasn’t “failed” yet. But, from it and its failures, I can tell you what I know about business, small business, diy business, crafting and art and design businesses, home based and online based businesses, and any kind of authentic, unusual, new, innovative, invention based, creative, crafty or art business.

As long as that last sentence was, this one is simple – things said in business guides are different and mean something different in application.

You will work 18 hours a day, 7 days a week AND spend $300 – $400 dollars in cash each month for years BEFORE it starts making any money -

When a business book or sba guide says, most businesses are in the red for the first 3 – 5 years, it means you will be paying out of your pocket, household budget, savings or financial sacrifices to work and work and work to make money with it. That can be a few hundred dollars a month or a few thousand, but as the business doesn’t cover it’s own costs, let alone pay you, that extra money it absorbs like a bottomless pit comes from you just to keep doing business at all.

97 People Playing Bingo Lose out a Hundred – Same is true in business endeavors, including yours -

Second, when a business book, investor guide for institutions and investors, or anything else says that most businesses fail – that does include yours no matter what you do right or how much money you have going towards it’s success. It is kind of like playing bingo at a bingo hall. Yes people win and take cash home, but 97 people out of that 100 lost each night and went home with less than the money they had when they went there. Those statistics about starting a business are the same way, it means that for every success, thousands – literally thousands of people and businesses were on the losing side of the equation and walked away with less than what they had in the first place. And, it isn’t any fun.

If you don’t know who will buy it – you don’t have a business that will work – even if there are those who need or would buy your product or service -

Third, when a business book or sba manual says “who will buy your product or service?” as part of the directions in the business plan planner or other guideline to help your business, it means in an implied manner that if you don’t know, you don’t have a business – no matter how great the idea, invention, plan, concept, campaign or business. It could very well be that your business serves a need or is very desirable from potential customer’s standpoint, but if you can’t define who they are, where they are or how to get them to see what you are offering and don’t know who they would be, you don’t have a business at all. And you won’t have one that has any chance of succeeding at all without that one element, though it doesn’t tell you that in their text.

There are literally three sides of a coin and it takes using all three for it to work -

Fourth, for artistic and creative endeavors at some core level of the product or service being offered to the consumer, whether it is actual art or crafts, music, dance, writing, performance art, creative consulting, public relations or any invention, novelty, innovation, inventive approach or creative application of anything – doing it as a business is a three-sided coin. The face of it is studio time which includes creating and creative work on it plus learning, continuing to expand skills and knowledge, etc. The back of the coin is the business activities it requires which include marketing, promotions, accounting and learning to apply those online and in-person skill sets, etc. And the sides or crowned edge of the coin is the creativity and creative drive which supports the other two and is used interchangeably as applied to those completely opposite types of thinking and activities.

For every dollar you borrow, investors want 3x that dollar back in a very short period of time (2 – 3 years) -

And the fifth point is this – when a business article in a magazine or investor insight article in a book or online publication talks about what they want as a return on their investment if they even consider putting money into something and they admit a desire to really have 10x their original investment come back to them, but typically expect to get at least 3x their money back – it means that is what you are going to give them for using their money. It also means that in 2 – 3 years, when they want to receive the return on their investment given back to them, they will pull all of their money plus their 2x – 3x return on their dollars – out of your business all about the same time you need that money the most for the business to survive past the founding stage.

Track record isn’t about sales figures – it is about you getting a return on the investment you have made into the business plus some -

Sixth, when a business book talks about investors and bankers in the business community looking at track record and valuations for risk before putting their support behind a business, it means several unsaid things including that you must show a return on your own investment over and above what money and time you’ve put into it. If you put in time over the course of months and years into your business, it is represented as a dollar value, even if it’s comparable value per hour is based on the minimum wage of the moment. That is part of your investment in a monetary sum plus an additional “lost opportunity cost” of having done something else, or nearly anything else and made some money. That may seem intangible, but it really is not and it does represent a dollar or monetary value which you were investing along with your efforts and cash to do the business as you went along. That means, if you could’ve been sitting in another job making $40,000 a year and did this instead – then along with showing at least a minimum wage pay for the time you did invest in it, there is another cost actually represented of $40,000 for each year you didn’t go to that job and make that instead.

A profit cannot be derived in a vacuum – it must include a return on the dollar value of your time plus your money, plus it’s sustained operating costs AND something beyond that coming from the business to be considered “profitable” -

Seventh, when business books explain how a profit is derived on paper to show what your business is capable of doing financially, it means that the costs described above including a wage for your time put into the business plus the lost opportunity cost of spending each year doing this before it showed a profit, plus the actual costs of overhead and marketing, supplies and professional fees, postage and internet service, etc. combined in a dollar amount must be realized and exceeded – then there is an actual profitability.

To say it another way, if you can’t get the original investment you’ve made (which includes all of those costs mentioned above across the time you’ve been doing it) plus its current operating costs plus something beyond that amount – it isn’t profitable, isn’t returning your own investment and consequently, won’t be expected to return the investment money someone else may put into it – so they won’t.

Telling a story about your business, yourself in context of the business, your products, or your services does not mean where were you born? -

Eighth, when a business article or guide explains how products, services, marketing materials and online profiles about the owner/s must “tell a story”, it does not mean your life story, nor does it mean to tell the story about the product and what all that product is. It means something else more closely aligned to a “hook” sort of like the last few scenes in television dramas and sitcoms that happen just before the commercial break.

It is a brief and interesting reason to come back and look, to see more, to want to know more, and to have something to talk about that is interesting to others. It is not necessarily the benefits of owning the product or having the service, but it can include those and yet, doesn’t have to convey them at all.

It is likely why Lady Gaga wore a “meat dress”, and everyone talks about it repeating her name in the story and reminds people of her music and what she does and what outrageous style and fashion her brand uses on stage and in personal appearances and in the media. All that from simply showing up in a dress made of meat. That is telling a story and guerrilla marketing at the same time.

A small business according to the SBA and bankers means a business of $3 – $5 million in sales, not smaller than that - even a startup -

Ninth, when the sba or a banker or investment group talks about a small business, they mean a business earning $5 million a year more or less, not $30 or $300 or $3,000 or $30,000 or $130,000 a year in sales. That is the truth. When small business loans and mentoring programs are offered, even those described as being available to poor credit candidates with low credit scores, or to small business enterprises and minorities, startups, or cottage businesses – they do not mean you, or me or anybody you know.

The business loan packages intended for underserved or low credit score applicants trying to start a small business actually require nearly the same level of credit score and credit worthiness as any standard business loan – nearly the same score within a few tens of points plus thousands or home equity as collateral. And, for a business to qualify for a “small business loan”, it must be able to generate, or reasonably accurately be expected to generate sales in the $3 – $5 million range, not less. And, that is what they mean by small business.

If you can’t show that your friends and family threw thousands of dollars into your business, the business community won’t want to either -

Tenth, when business and sba guides, business funding articles and business classes talk about seeking money for funding from friends and family first, it actually means that they look at that as important to convey whether people you know trust you enough to get it done – and gave you their money. It is used as an indicator of your trustworthiness, your ability to persuade or convince or “sell” the value of your business to those people you know AND it shows that if you can’t get that money, banks and investors would be wise to stay away too.

It doesn’t tell you that when you read it and if like me, your friends and family members are about sick of hearing how your business is doing while telling you for the umpteenth time why it won’t work, can’t work, isn’t going to work, isn’t Degas or Picasso or Michelangelo or the Beatles or Sting or Frank Sinatra or who the hell ever, or isn’t comparable with the written works of James Michener or Tolstoy or Tolkien or the filmwork of James Cameron, or the merchandising quality of Macy’s and Saks Fifth Avenue, etc., ad infinitum – then the last place you would want to try and get money to support your business would be those people among your family and friends.

But, it won’t read like that to business community resources from the sba to bankers to investors and investment gurus. It will read that you couldn’t get their trust and belief, that they know you and don’t consider you trustworthy to get the job done or that they are willing to risk their money betting on you to win. That is how it will read – like a big “steer clear” sign.

Even if you do everything right whatever that may be, it still might not work just because reality is like that -

And, last but not least – it is a certain kind of Cinderella thinking that causes blogs, business books, sales books, marketing tools books, business magazine articles and authors in general about business things to offer you or me with the idea that if we will do all the right things and just believe, that it will work. It means that if it isn’t working, then it must be because we didn’t do something right or we didn’t believe enough or we didn’t think positively enough or we weren’t diligent enough or we weren’t worthy of the task somehow. But, that is not possible nor likely.

First of all, none of us have that much control over anything and secondly, that belies the central fault in the thinking that if we do it good, then good things will come from it. Well, it can but it might not – that is reality. And, of which it is a part of why there are human beings engaged in this endeavor of business and art, creativity and inventing, innovating and marketing – rather than machines. It is because the flexibility of human thought and drive is necessary for it to work and without it – no man-made machine or software program can match it and get that job done.

None of those business books tell you that very effectively but it is what it means when they say in those books to be flexible, think on your feet, look for the opportunities and grab them as they present themselves, tailor the product and service to the marketplace / to the customer / etc. It is what it means when those books say, “carve out a niche”, “tell a story with your product”, “grab onto a trend” or “customize your products and services to an existing trend>”.

I found out there have been some sales of products I created on zazzle that I didn’t know happened and had an absolute panix attack when I discovered there were none of my images on the site. After waiting awhile on the phone, it turns out they are already working to fix that. And I emailed the folks over at Pokono 3D about missing their webinar on Wednesday after crashing my laptop several times trying to attend it – and, that after waiting nearly all day for it.

Very annoying. Looks like I’m going to have to find some money to get a new laptop – mine is apparently buggared with some stupid something despite McAfee, and my best efforts. Maybe there is just too much in it to do anything or my computer skills need upgrading – or possibly both.

Aside from working with making some new zazzle products, I have the other half of the business plan to write and format for The Mad Scientist Group. Finally gave up running around trying to find support for it through the small business startup services and economic development groups here. It is a waste of time. If I hear one more thing about a required boot camp for starting a business that I would have to attend in order to learn how to do a business plan, do cost and sales projections, etc. – I’ll just scream although – I’m not turning down any help. Besides which – around New York City’s five boroughs, including this one – those classes don’t start again until April. So as far as they are concerned, everything I’m doing or might do – must come to a complete halt until APRIL plus however many weeks the course runs – or maybe its a one night thing, that wasn’t clear about it. Regardless, how could a city of 12 million people have so few of these resources available and in such spotty measure? Why is that?

And, on top of that – they are nothing but clearinghouses for loans AT 12% INTEREST. That is so disgusting I can’t even imagine that they are intended for small businesses and startups in particular – especially those run by women, minorities and those economically disadvantaged in the first place that are trying to start a business in order to help themselves up the economic ladder. What kind of damn nonsense is that?

It is absolutely without merit. While the banks are borrowing at 0% interest – they are charging everyone else through the economic development (CDFIs) groups at an interest rate which is nothing but highway robbery and sure to eat any and all profits that might ever be available from any business they are “helping”. Anyway – its a waste of time going that direction. It will either have to be bootstrapped, crowdsourced or sold out in some measure to some partners or investors or something. Or maybe, forget it and not bother with any of it at all. Building a business based on innovation and invention, inventiveness and creating new products and new sustainable businesses seems like a far-fetched idea to any of the people I’ve spoken to so far in the business startup groups. They must have been sticking people in businesses around here in hair salons ad nauseum for a long, long time as THE answer because there are nearly enough to have one for every two people living in Staten Island. Maybe that is their idea of starting a business rather than something technology oriented or innovation oriented. I don’t know. But I do know this – how many hair salons, barber shops, nail fixing places and pizza places does a small community really need? I mean, honestly.

– cricketdiane

**

I will say one more thing, until Americans locally everywhere realize that it is going to be required of each of us individually and collectively to help resolve this economic mess through innovation, invention, inventiveness, resourcefulness, building new products and building new businesses for the short and long term that expand beyond the local community – there is nothing great that is going to happen. And that is a real shame.

Well, somebody should’ve told me that when offering a business card to someone they would give it back – over twenty people have done that already. Now, either it is the worst business card design in the world – which is possible, or people want nothing to do with it and don’t even want to go look at The America the Beautiful Show websites it describes (or my blog.) Maybe it is too much trouble to take a business card and look up what is on it. Maybe people just don’t want anything to do with anything I have built regardless of what it is and are trying to tell me that. Even their curiosity isn’t awakened to go see what it might be – very bizarre.

But, at the very least – books about business should say, “oh and by the way, most people will either give back your business card after a half-assed look at it or throw it in the trash on their way out the door with it. That is to be expected.” It could say that. I would’ve read it and expected that to happen. Or, if it means something specifically – like, “this indicates you have managed to create the crappiest business card of all time,” that would be helpful. But, no.

Maybe it is too much to read – with website addresses, email address, phone number and blog address. Maybe that makes it too hard to figure out and the person handing it back is literally saying to me by that action, “look, I’m really not going to try and look this up – so give it to somebody else.” Well, isn’t that special. I’m so glad to know that my project isn’t worth the ten minutes it would take to look it up and see it right quick. Surely that isn’t right.

And, I don’t really know what business cards any of them do take and look up the info on them. Is it the one for a locksmith? For a vacation condo? For the plumber nearby? What do they think is valuable enough to keep and want to have handy? Well, okay – the truth is that more than twenty cards were given out and handed back to me with only about five of those cards given to family members – which were handed back or a few taken to give out which they then set in a cup on a desk at home or in a desk drawer with junk on top of them. Little help that was. None of them were given to anyone and strangely enough, most of my family members didn’t want to tell anybody about it either. Where they would forward emails about some of the most trivial, stupid, obnoxious or simply untrue crap to everyone they know, none of them wanted anyone to hear about The America the Beautiful Show project or other things I’ve created online. Well, there you go. Maybe it is a bad project without any real chance of doing anything significant or an embarrassment of some kind and I don’t realize it. That could be it.

My parents have told me often enough, “don’t tell anybody you know us.” And, it wasn’t because I was falling down drunk or something – they didn’t want their friends to know we are related or even that we know one another. There is something significantly wrong about that. And, business books ought to warn that family and family friends won’t want to know you when you start a business venture of any kind – and that they won’t want to be associated with it, nor put any money in it, nor hear about it, nor tell anyone else about it, nor have anything to do with it – no matter what it is.

Thank God I didn’t open a restaurant.

***

You can start your own business but don’t expect us to buy from you or anybody we know to buy from you –

How could a restaurant or any other business get off the ground with the people in the community, in the family, in the neighborhood, neighbors, family and friends acting that way about it? Are they kidding?

They don’t act that way at Wal-Mart or when offering $450 to buy two tickets for a single event one time that they could care less about seeing . . .

What is up with that?

Or when their kids are paying $1300 for a cabana at poolside to blow through a couple thousand dollars at the Hard Rock Cafe drinking and gambling and buying other “stuff”.

I’m rather tired of being told I’m not working, nor contributing, not doing anything of value nor making an effort. Look across this blog and it is obvious that these things didn’t simply get up online on the blog posts by themselves.

Now, in case you’re wondering why I said this, let me explain briefly. After all this work and massive work sitting here in my apartment which is behind the scenes of this blog – I’ve been told again by my family to go get a job washing dishes if I expect to make any money. And, I don’t like it because first of all, housekeeping would never get me a seal of approval, second of all – it doesn’t pay enough to keep me from being homeless and third of all, it completely ignores all of the other things I could possibly do with the limited time I have remaining in my life. Yes, I would rather sell everything I have sitting here at a yard sale, dump the rest and go be homeless or turn to stealing for a living.

I’m not qualified to be a street sweeper. I do about the worst job washing floors and standing to wash dishes would likely insure my rent would never get paid because I would be fired in short order from mucking it up. I’ve tried to be a waitress and cost the owners about $30 when the plates of Asian lobster cuisine went flying across the floor. It is not my forte.

But, those are the jobs I am to go find to call it work and make some money according to my parents. These other things have no value and cannot make any money no matter what I do with them according to these people I’ve been stuck with all my life.

Well, I’m here to tell you this one thing –

I think there are a lot of people in this country that believe the same thing as they do. I think there are neighbors and friends of mine that believe the same thing and people in churches and government leadership that also have no appreciation for the work I’ve done. That’s what I think.

And, yet – I’m supposed to be a good sport and consider a good attitude about all this. Well, I’ve considered a good attitude about all this – I’ve decided they are wrong and that money is not the only judge of value. There had to be some usefulness somewhere in all of it and I’m working now on turning those things into working capital. And, if I can’t this time – I’ll put a yard sale listing on craigslist and let people come in to buy the durn paintbrushes for a dollar, the science files can go in the trash and the designs can be thrown out into the street again as they already have nine other times in my life.

When I was watching the “Intelligence Squared Debate” on bloomberg early this morning, I think it was Lawrence Korb that repeated twice, the statement “Undermine their Narrative, Undermine their Narrative” and I thought, now wait – that’s what I’ve been living with in my Republican conservative family nearly all my life.

How did I get to be their enemy? How did I get to be the enemy of my community and the conservatives before I ever started speaking out against them? Why did they make me the “bad guy” to be blamed for every last shred of the problems in the US and in Georgia and in Cobb County and in the national budget deficits? Why did they exclude me and then use me as a place of blame when I’ve had less access to resources than nearly anyone? Why is that? Why does it even make sense to anyone?

But after working for many, many years for 16 hours a day for often, 7 days a week to make a contribution, to create solutions, to become better educated, to make things and create options that never existed before, and writing, and researching, and doing the computer things necessary to bring them online, and telling people about it, and making notes, and keeping up with the news, and working to learn more about how to do business successfully – I’ve no understanding of why I’m being told I have nothing to offer of value by my own family, my community, my friends, my state and my nation, including anyone in it and that means, Republicans, conservatives, church people, and Tea Party braggarts, too.

As if it isn’t bad enough to have done all this work without ever making the money from it which in anyone else’s hands it probably would’ve made – why should I have to endure constant self-esteem damaging attacks from nearly everywhere I turn and at the most unexpected times from my own family?

From what I can see – even in the Intelligence Squared Debate, one of the Republican cronies at the table had to work into the limited opportunities to say something (after all, it was about the US having its global wings clipped and not the national budget), that, the biggest danger to national security is “entitlements” and he said, “but nobody in Washington wants to talk about that.” He doesn’t look at the corporate welfare as “entitlements” and he, along with his Republican conservatives at Karl Roves’ massively well-funded political action committee, don’t look at “entitlements” as those given to Israel at $7 million dollars A DAY for military equipment and training, plus no telling how much every day for humanitarian and social / civic funding. That isn’t considered an “entitlement” although nearly every nation in the Mideast is getting one of that similar neighborhood of millions per day from our tax money.

Their ideas of “entitlements” don’t include the TALF money given away, the TARP money used to bail out banks and Wall Street firms, the other programs that bought toxic assets from those corporations, the massive staffs and paychecks being given to Congressional offices and Senate offices, the Treasury Department hiring people to manage the economic / financial debacle with salaried employees to help with buying the toxic assets being given on the high end of the stratosphere, including the $500,000 a month that was paid to a Wall Street firm every month for a year to tell them when to sell the toxic assets of General Motors. Nor do they count as “entitlements,” the over $185 BILLION Dollars given to AIG without Congressional accord, without any vote and without any authority to do so with our tax money.

They don’t look at it as “entitlements” when their own health care is subsidized, their own private action committees funded, when they get grants or get them for their own children and friends, nor when they give billions of dollars away for various industries and corporations to be subsidized when they are already profitable. There are not considerations of what these massive outlays of money have done to this nation’s insolvency. Those things are not blamed. Neither are the hundreds of millions paid to Fannie and Freddie executives including AFTER they worked there and the place went to hell in a handbasket.

No, it has to be told on every Christian broadcast, right-wing talk show, every hour of FoxNews opinion broadcasting, every Tea Party conservatives’ opportunity for airtime, and every email forwarding right-wing conservative opinion making operative, that the real danger to America are only those in our families who don’t do it “their way”, don’t think about it “their way”, don’t look at it “their way,” agree with things being “their way, ” act as “they want,” don’t dress and look as “they want”, don’t live in the manner as “they want,” don’t think as “they want”. And, that includes me and everyone in America like me – whatever that is and whoever it may be.

I guess I really should be angrier about this. I’ve run out of excuses for why people don’t hire me. I’ve run out of excuses for why people will give millions of dollars to other people doing the same things I’m doing, creating the kinds of things I’ve created, designing the level of things backed up by research that I’ve created, writing the degree of quality things that I’ve been writing for many years. I don’t know why that is anymore and as many excuses as I have made for the multitude of reasons why my community, and my state, and in fact, my nation’s businesses and leaders exclude me – none of them really have ever made any sense, but they do that. It is probably the way I look, I’ve said. It is probably because I don’t own the kinds of clothes I’m supposed to have in order to be doing this kind of work. And, then I said, well – maybe these people can’t know what I can do unless it is obvious by doing it and letting them see it – so I did that and the blog is certainly evidence of it.

But, now – I’ve run out of excuses for why a single chair for their offices is worth many times more to them than I am and than any of my work might ever be. I have no more excuses to offer for why it is like that in America, or why Mubarak and Qaddafi as sadistic and horrific as they are – could be treated as friends and I have been treated like an enemy and an “undesirable” by my state and community. I don’t get that. In fact, I’m not sure it is even worth trying to understand that anymore. It is more insane than I am and more evil than I ever have had the ability to be.

– cricketdiane

***

My mother explained to me a couple nights ago, that I need to do whatever it takes to make money except for spreading my legs. But, in America and especially in the Great Republican Sovereign State of Georgia which is predominantly Christian, Conservative and Republican – the only use for a woman in this territory is that.

Maybe its why she thought to include that first on the list of things “not to use” for making money. Okay to give it away – but don’t do that one for money.

Thanks, mom.

***

So, I added a couple things and fixed a typo. And, walked to the store and back. Took some nifty photos of the flowers in blossom on the way to put on the cricketdiane.com site. And, I thought about it, and I thought some more about it. And, so far today – the computer has only crashed twice trying to load a gallery on the godaddy site where cricketdiane.com is hosted with photographs of daffodils. And, I’ve thought some more about it.

I’ve watched a bit of the news that is covered over today with what it means to be bipolar and about stories of mental illness. And, I’ve decided that sounds good – it would have to be easier to live in a mental hospital than this. And, after thirty years of Republican rule – I would have to say, my life is really never going to get any better anyway. Someone should’ve just told me that in the first place. In a country where they worship Karl Rove, and people like Qaddafi and Mubarak and fawn over BP even after they’ve killed hundreds of people by considering the cost to be too great to operate safely compared to what they’d have to pay out if many people were killed, among other things – how could I possibly expect to be considered an asset?

Where Goldman Sachs screws everybody on both sides of the table, steals tax money, creates evil and conniving strategies for getting ahead then gets treated like royalty, what could any one of us expect?

Can people (including my family) honestly tell me that somehow the worth and value of my efforts suddenly changes the moment it makes $40 million dollars? And, that money means that when I was doing it day in and day out – suddenly it IS considered work instead of being considered a waste of time and a worthless one at that? Is that what I’m supposed to believe?

And, I’m supposed to believe that someone’s efforts that are the same as mine which are making money for them makes theirs more valuable, more credible and more worthwhile? Is that what this means? Of does it in fact mean I simply need to stop working at this and go bag groceries or wash dishes, however many weeks that will make a few dollars before they fire me?

That is something I considered when walking to the store, that people think if I can be given a sign to paint and do it successfully, then they will give me a thing more complicated to do – like a painting of their house and then if I can do that, they will give me a chance to do a painting of their dog. Well, I hate to say it – but I’m not a sign painter.

– cricketdiane

***

Did you know that I started playing chess when I was three years old and taught adults to play chess when I was only five years old, so I could grow up to be told my only value is to wash floors? Did you know that if you are a woman in America, it will always be to watch men with half the education, a third of the knowledge, a fifth of the conscience and only a tenth of the willingness to continue being educated – make hundreds of thousands of dollars for doing as little of value as possible while being paid for it? That is America.

Angelo Mozillo has value. It has been explained to me. He has a right to do whatever he wants to whomever he wants in whatever way he wants, because he is a good American and I’m the great cause of all America’s woes financially and socially. That’s because he made money screwing Americans out of their money, out of their life savings, out of their American dream, and out of their homes – and I don’t know what is wrong with me that I just can’t do that too so I can garner the respect and freedom he is given.

***

The other day, when the budget cuts were being blasted down the throats of America by the Republicans in Congress, I wrote an A-Z and then using the Greek Alphabet – the alpha and the omega of why the Republicans and conservatives are the exact opposite of what they publicly claimed. And, it only matters to me because I have already suffered over thirty years of their crap, watching my nation go down the drain at their hands along the way – that I feel it necessary to be saying something about it these last couple years.

I am repeating it here starting with a couple comments I made just before starting the entire ABC’s of why people serving the Republicans simply have not understood what they are serving.

Here they are -

***

Karl Rove, still running the country from the pig seat – is on FoxNews now explaining how everyone in America is to think about everything

***

Grass Roots people may have gathered for the Tea Party but professional ultra conservative right wing political operatives run it & profits

***

How many businesses have been bankrupted by Republican conservative created economic meltdown of 2007 – 2011? More than 800,000? 1 million?

***

It doesn’t matter what I say, it doesn’t add one thing to options available in Washington – they could tax sales of stocks, pay off US debt.

***

The spending problem in the US is that Republicans are keeping a third of our population in jails & institutions, keeping mass numbers poor.

***

Did you know that Republicans over last twenty years, have allowed exploratory mining & drilling in our national parks? check Mark Twain PK

***

Why are Republican conservatives &Tea Party against high-speed rail? Do they just not own stock in it like they do in cars & gas companies?

***

US Budget Cuts to Destroy US Economy & kill off most disadvantaged 41211Finalprogramcuts.pdf (application/pdf Object) http://goo.gl/aVSTY

***

$500 million taken from WIC for babies, children under 5 & pregnant women to have milk fruit juice eggs cereal – bankers given $700 Billion

***

When Republicans conservatives & Tea Party have finished off America this year it will all look like Detroit or Fukushima – US $$ worthless

***

California Republicans have been trying to remove breaks for workers, lunch breaks, and all safe work place regulations for yrs & yrs & yrs

***

New York State, they removed funds from general fund for paying off credit default swaps probably & then declared deficit as if no revenues

***

150 yrs after the Civil War & Republicans have divided us into 50 sovereign nation states instead of one great nation & made them sovereign.

***

You know what the word is for small central government? the word is king , ruler , aristocracy , monarch , but basically the word is king

***

$185 Billion Dollars to AIG without even batting an eye or crossing a t – but America’s women, children, babies aren’t worth it to Congress

***

They sure have made fools of the elderly who voted the Republicans conservatives & Tea Party into Washington – now elderly are getting axed

***

Republicans already made cuts to the programs to help with heating bills for the elderly in the winter, cut programs for fans in the summer

***

They’ve cut housing programs and assisted living programs from HUD, cut funding for food programs to the poor, elderly & disabled, to babies

***

Were Republicans right when they said we had to give $700 Billion Dollars to banks because otherwise credit wouldn’t flow? Where are loans?

***

If Kyl weren’t getting $200,000 yr to work in Washington representing special interests as elected Republican crony, he’d be what?

***

David_Gergen, The budget cuts you & your intellectually inbred Washington friends have foisted upon Americans is bullying & it took jobs .

***

A credible plan to pay off US Debt completely in less than a yr is to put 10 cents tax on every dollar of stocks, bonds, CDOs, cds sold

***

Charts of average income pay in US were $55,000 a yr – turns out reality is $33,000 a yr – Why does Congress get paid $179,000 per year each

***

Tomorrow, Congress will vote to make more Americans homeless, take milk fruit & cheese off tables of children, remove more jobs from America
(they already did that on Friday, when they passed budget cuts)

***

We didn’t send Democrats to Washington incl President to work w Republicans We voted to stop Republicans asinine policies destroying America

***

Charles Wolf, Jr.: The Facts About American ‘Decline’ – WSJ.com – In relative terms, the story is not always as good… online.wsj.com/article/SB1000…

***
storiedstrategy Dr John Ortner
Aspire, achieve, teach: Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail – R. Emerson

response made back to the above twitter comment – (by me)

@storiedstrategy I have wasted my life believing & acting on that crap – people need to look at Snooky as an example of what works in 2011.

***

And, that is the truth.

***

Republicans were so worried about Lehman, AIG taking $40 billion out of US economy in short time by failing – now using US budget to do that

***

Here’s what happens – Republicans get Dems to pass these budget cuts, then when people suffer & communities devastated – blame Obama for it

***

I am not the one who used US taxpayer money to arm, train & give sophisticated equipment to Qaddafi known to be unstable, psychotic & vile

***

Taking money from the poor is stupid, all you’re doing is making criminals out of otherwise decent Americans

***

Why not take money from where there is money – like the US & London stock markets whose volumes trading numbers in the billions a day?

How many Senators? 100? How many Representatives at $179,000 each plus staff members times $157,000 a yr each plus how much per diem? Hmmm?

***

(By the way, did you know that the amount of money spent on liquor for a full bar of premium brands made available on any flight for the Congressmen and Senators and paid for by US taxpayers is the same amount of money given to a person on social security to live for a year?)

***

?REVENUE is the problem with the federal and states’ budgets – the new catchphrase by #Republicans is a lie – tax stocks pay off US debt now

***

Whatever conservative thinktank or pr firm came up with current #Republican nonsense phrase revenue isn’t the problem fails to see US debt

***

I noticed that census figures show avg salaries in America are about $33,000 /yr rather than $55,000 /yr but govt charts haven’t changed

(When decisions were being made every year over the past five years, including last year – the assumption was made that the average American was making $55,000 a year – when in fact 90% of the nation’s income paying jobs do not pay anywhere near the downside of that amount.)

***

If that is correct & majority of Americans are NOT making $55,000 per year then the US has a REVENUES problem – axing programs won’t fix it

***

#Republicans don’t see a Revenue problem because they are getting paid $200,000 /yr plus their investments, benefits & perks at our expense

***

If every sale, purchase, trade, swap of a share of stock paid 10% of that dollar value to US Treasury, we wouldn’t be broke – no cuts req

***

When Mayor Bloomberg & Governor Cuomo cut funding to programs for homeless & work advantage / housing programs in NYC – they made more homeless

***

Now, while US builds schools in Afghanistan w tax dollars & everywhere else, our schools are relieved of tax money & more are homeless in US

***

Here are the ABC’s of Truth – they say the truth matters -

***

A #Republicans are so hungry to get at money given to Social Security, they can’t stand it. They will never be satiated until America is dead

Z #Republicans charged with protecting our freedoms – gave those freedoms to corporations while taking them away from the American people

***

And, then I went on through the Greek alphabet – and believe this – there is enough to go through nearly all the alphabets of the entire world and probably still have entries that could be appropriately made about them.

– cricketdiane

***

But, this is the one I find to be the most important of all -
How many businesses have been bankrupted by Republican conservative created economic meltdown of 2007 – 2011? More than 800,000? 1 million?

***

When the Depression of this Century started, I said people would be better off being told they won’t work for the next five years. But – no.

***

When small businesses have losses – there are not federal tax dollars used to bail them out. When families are without jobs – what happens?

***

Could the Republicans be voted into office if only the 1 percent paying to line their pockets were voting? Probably. Those are what matters.
***
CNN just noted Washington D.C. doesn’t have full representation in Congress – well, apparently neither do Americans – only rich represented

***

So, you believe throwing sick, elderly, disabled and poor families and children into the streets serves to make a strong military?

***
Grass Roots people may have gathered for the Tea Party but professional ultra conservative right wing political operatives run it & profits

***
Karl Rove, still running the country from the pig seat – is on FoxNews now explaining how everyone in America is to think about everything

***

Buerkle, Republican NY sitting on CSPAN talking s**t about giving banks & businesses assurances to get off billions they are holding & lend

***
It would be worth watching CSPAN as the Republican run House of Representatives vote on budget cuts to decimate US economy & poor & elderly

***

It only takes a sales tax of 10 cents on the dollar for every stock traded, sold, or purchased and US debt will be paid off in six months.

***

Republicans worked the US for 30 yrs – if it worked so well, why do they have to lie in order to get the job? to get money? to get elected?

***

banks stole homes from everyone who cared about having them & refused to work out mortgages – why should anyone buy them?

***
The US Treasury had given a contract to a Wall Street firm for $500,000 per month to tell them when to sell GM toxic assets – but no to WIC

***

There is no greater sickness of mental health than those in Washington who would decide to destroy the poor, elderly, sick, disabled & young

***

Seeing the volumes of stocks traded, the idea that my gallon of milk is taxed, everything I buy or create is taxed, but no sales tax on them

***
Corporations should be paying 25 cents on the dollar for every single dollar of sales gross made in US, that gives back to where they got it

***
Wasn’t that equal pay for equal work thing passed in 1976? Let’s see, now who has been in charge predominantly since then? Republican consv

***
Wasn’t that equal pay for equal work thing passed in 1976? Let’s see, now who has been in charge predominantly since then? Oh yeah – men.

***
In 2020 women might make the same as men according to CNN from a study – well, let’s all wait to eat or to feed our children until 2020

***
Apparently both Republicans & Democrats only need to keep their rich friends happy to get those donations. They don’t need American’s votes.

***
History will record this moment & every name in US House of Representatives that gives yes to pass budget cuts destroying US children & poor

***
It is so funny for people to amuse themselves making fun of braniacs and nerds until they need their computer fixed or something looked up.

***
Karl Rove & George Bush made it popular to be a D student. Who wants a doctor who got a D in anything? Who wants a stupid Congressman?

***
Personally, I didn’t think it was funny when people explained to me that most Americans don’t know how nuclear power plants work nor want to

***
When Republicans, Tea Party groups & conservatives took money from Americans promising good things for America – they were lying as a method

***
Under Republicans, there have been fewer and fewer Americans who will have the American Dream, communities have been destroyed, lives wasted

***
In Atlanta, their answer to homelessness was to remove all the park benches, arrest people for tying their shoes, putting people in jail

***
We have had wars and pestilence that didn’t kill, maim and injure as many people and families as the bad policies of the Republican Party

***
Republicans have been running this country 30 yrs & hundreds of thousands of Americans have been killed from food poisoning – its their way

(***_
When honor is given to the most corrupt among us, when they are set upon high places, when they are regarded with awe & given our riches –

***
What did you think the results would be?

***

Every time the #Republicans reached into America’s pockets & gave that money to ruthless, cruel obscene dictators using it for atrocities –

***
When the #Republicans gave the hard-earned money from our paychecks & small businesses to wealthy bankers and Wall Street firms and the rich

***
And, when they left Americans hungry, homeless, hopeless, uneducated, broken, beaten and without freedom – what did they think would result?

***
What did you think the results would be?

***

As long as Republican Conservatives and the Tea Party’s professional conservative political aristocracy funded by exclusive billionaires clubs and corporations funding PACS to get their friends elected – none of which look at the America people as a valuable part of our nation’s assets, but rather as a bunch of scum in the way of them enjoying a free reign of stealing every national resource, every natural resource, every dime and dollar that has ever been made by anyone in the US – then they will continue their war on all of us.

And, believe this – the report just made by China about the human rights abuses by the United States failed to report 80% of the atrocities in the United States abusing human and civil rights of its citizens that have been perpetrated, devised, instigated and applied by the Republicans in every state they have run into the ground. And, I guarantee – those abuses are far more than high unemployment figures, CIA activities and Abu Graib.

– cricketdiane

***

Now, either the nation of the United States of America was never I and everyone else was taught that it is or the conservative Republicans since Barry Goldwater and Nixon remade the United States into something it was never intended to be and was never right for it, wasn’t good in the final analysis and didn’t build the nation to a stronger foundation. Instead of believing that the first statement is true, since I see all evidence that the US is what I and others were taught that it is supposed to be and what its foundations were intentionally created to be – I think the other statement is the more likely accurate.

The Republicans in their perverse fear and trepidation of change or of sharing power in the country, leaving bigotry and prejudice behind, including women in the society into which they were born as full-fledged first class citizens, and in their paranoia that the war protests challenged their tenuous hold on power, reacted by becoming and by doing every thing that the great demonic powered tyrants of past history have done. And, not even one considering how un-American, un-democratic, un-Christian, intolerant, brutal, perverse, hedonistic, unholy and just plain evil that would be judged by the results of those things.

And, once more – I was not the one who worshiped a dead brass bull on a city street, put billions of dollars of taxpayers’ money in the hands of sadistic and psychotic people who tortured their own citizens brutally every day by the thousands, beat homeless people to death on the streets of America, nor taught my children to do any such thing, nor was I the one who took the brightest, best, strongest young adults of our nation to be blown into a million pieces in pursuit of wars to acquire oil rather than finding some other way to do it.

Those weren’t my choices.

– cricketdiane

&***&

I’m not the one who gave away American patents to foreign nations to compete against us. I’m also not the one who allowed corporate raiders to takeover our nation’s established companies using junk bonds and leveraged promises based on the future sell-off of the companies’ long-established resources and assets in order to dismantle it and pocket those resources. I’m not the one who looked the other way when they were doing that and destroying companies and employers whose businesses had been growing for over a hundred years simply to enrich a few by robbing the pension funds, borrowing against any future earnings of the company and selling off all its assets that might make any future earnings even possible.

Then, weren’t they the same ones bankrupting the company and putting all those people and communities into a welfare state – despite those employees having worked as good decent hard-working Americans for years upon years upon years? I wasn’t the one who thought that was a good idea for our nation. That is not “free market capitalism.” That is the destructive power of greed and aristocratic power without fetter.

But, who did do that? Lets’ see – when I look around now – aren’t those the same corporate raiders and their groupies that are setting policy right now in the Republican Party and in the Tea Party and in the conservative thinktanks? Aren’t they they same bunch that have been running this nation into the ground for the last thirty years? Why, yes it is. How about that.

And, aren’t they the same ones who demanded the Republicans’ budget cuts made this last week, further decimating our economy? And, further decimating America’s families, children, individuals and communities at a time when there simply are no jobs available to get on their feet? And, then aren’t these the same corporate jackasses and Republican conservatives who turned to the American people and blamed them for the entire economic meltdown, the financial fiasco and the entire budget deficit and debt of the United States and every state in the Union?

Why – yes, I believe it is the same ones doing all those things. And Americans pour money on them like it was water. They hover by their radios to hear them tell it the way it is “supposed to be told.” They send their church dollars to support Republicans, their veterans’ dollars to support them, their immigration policy support dollars to support the same ones, their family and community organizations’ dollars to support them and their business donations to underwrite them. And Americans repeat the words their political conservative Republican opinion leaders and operatives say as if those ideas are the gospel truth, no matter if those words are the absolute opposite of reality, which in anyone’s book would make those words, a lie.

There is a 25 percent chance the pump price will exceed $4 a gallon from June through August, the agency said, compared with a 10 percent probability gasoline could fall below $3 during the same period.

My Note –

I think they need to review their math skills at the agency where they made this projection. It is wrong.

The price of gasoline is already at or over $4.00 a gallon in Chicago, it has been reported. And, it is over $4 a gallon in California, Denver and probably anywhere Spring Break destinations are used to having a captive audience.

Summer will be even more so. My guess is that the price of gasoline will go up substantially higher than that because the traders and speculators driving the prices per barrel are already trying to figure out how to offload what they’ve purchased and make a bigger profit from it. They likely figure this is one of those once in a lifetime deals where they can really make a killing. That would be my guess. It will stagger through the economy faster than the contracts that will get delivered because that is how it has done in the past (2008, 1970’s) as companies try to get ahead of the upswing in costs to have a buffer.

On a personal note, as I have noticed in the stores when I stopped buying cereal – it the boxes that cost nearly $5 already get any skinnier – we can use them as postage stamps instead. I don’t know how they get away with it. Many foods now look like something from a child’s play kitchen set with little in it at all. That is going to be even more so as the commodities prices have been driving upwards by the traders on the exchanges and now add the increased price of oil, gasoline, shipping and increased cargo charges to them. It is not going to work.

The law of supply and demand would naturally bring these prices down or the quantities up because there cannot possibly be as many people buying these things at these prices for the amount of product offered. But, the free market doesn’t exist in America in that sense. It is unnaturally supported in the manner middlemen including the commodities traders are driving the prices. The losses can be written off and it doesn’t yield any incentive to meet the market demand where it is and price competitively to it at the real value.

Oh well. If we had a better deal on the oil that is being pulled out of the ground in America, like Libya’s foul leaders got from the oil industries – we wouldn’t even be having this problem.

They only give away 12% of the profits and charge a “sign-on” bonus over a billion dollars each to the oil companies (and they are glad to get it.) Damn ridiculous while we are subsidizing the oil companies and begging them to do whatever they will to get our oil out of the ground so they can profit at our expense. Damn ridiculous.

As I was responding to this question, it was obvious that it would make a better post where I can expand it a bit with more links –

It is about what people can do to stop the flow of funds to Mubarak and Qaddafi (Gaddafi), find their hidden assets and wealth, what to do with the information once it is found and what American taxpayers can do to stop brutal, vicious dictators like them from being supported with American taxpayer money –

This is the question from Michelle that I had been answering –

michellefrommadison
Submitted on 2011/03/08 at 4:31 am

What can American taxpayers do to help them out?

Japan freezes assets of Libya’s Gaddafi, others | Reuters
2 #

cricketdiane
Submitted on 2011/03/08 at 4:59 pm | In reply to michellefrommadison

Specific to Mr. Qaddafi and his sons – their financial wealth is being located and frozen. However, since the Qaddafi regime is still in place and intends to continue in the style to which they have become accustomed, there are actually some things that US citizens can do about that.

First, make sure that there is nowhere on this planet that doesn’t know what kind of human beings they are.

Second, make sure that the wealthy who have hosted them, fawned over them, treated them like gods, and partied with them understand that none of us think that is okay nor acceptable.

Third, let our government leaders know that trading off our principles in order to do business with those insatiably cruel, malicious regimes is unacceptable and that our tax dollars are not to be used to support any such thing.

And, fourth – make sure that the strength of our conviction about it is heard everywhere around the world including at the tables of the IMF, at the World Bank, at the European Parliament, at the tables of the United Kingdom leadership, at the United Nations, at the policy-making foundations and organizations throughout the US and around the world, at the treasuries of every national decision-making body and at the NGOs, Industries, Corporations, Businesses and Political Parties that have in the past, supported them. It is not “kind of okay.” It is not okay at all.

If there is anything that you find online about the Qaddafi regime, the Libya Investment Authority, the Qaddafi sons and their shenanigans or where they have met with anyone in the past – and you stumble over it while looking at something online in the news or in some investors’ information, or looking at some public relations or consulting firm or Wall Street firm that has bragged about it in the past – then ship it over to the UN Secretariat with the link and to the US State Department. It only takes a few minutes to do that and then if it is something they haven’t known already, they can find those resources and take charge of them for the Libyan people. The same thing is true for the Mabarak fortune which is still being tracked around the world. These things are simple enough.

It is time to say that we aren’t going to put up with it anymore.

And, if you find any photos online of Qaddafi and his regime members, family members, sons and daughter being worshiped by our business leaders, our political leaders, our industry members, our corporate CEOs, our wealthiest and powerful, our political party members – then publicly share those and the links where they can be found. If you find evidence in written materials from the past, and photos of the brutality, cruelties and torture of these regimes, publish it, forward it, blog about it and tell others where the information can be found.

The ICC and UN Secretariat among other international groups, including Interpol are working to locate some of these things and keeping them current information rather than lost in something from 1986 somewhere – will be helpful when they start to look for it as they build these cases against this brutality.

– cricketdiane

***

I had originally started with this part – in response to Michelle – (and turned it around when posting it here) –

The first thing American taxpayers can do is to say something. When our money goes to put sophisticated military hardware in the hands of the brutal regimes around the world that are known to be psychotic, authoritarian, abusive, torturing their own people, sponsoring terrorism around the world and denying basic universal human rights to their people, then the people of the world believe that we, as Americans are supporting those horrors in their lives and in their nation.

Saying something about it to our legislators, to the public, to fellow citizens, to our churches, to our NGOs, to our State Department, to our President, to our family members and to our communities of friends is first.

The second thing Americans can do is to tell legislators on the appropriations committee when those appropriations are being made and send emails or make phone calls to the Congressional and Senate members on the foreign relations and appropriations committees as well as the government oversight committee. (wait a minute and I’ll look it up.)

However, most of the real policy decisions are being made in the party policy-making committees at the Republican and Democratic Party using their networks of resources and through their headquarters eventually. Those policy decisions are then enacted through their Party representatives serving in the Congress, Senate or in state governments and local governments.

These policy-makers draw on information provided to them from their favored think-tanks and academics as well as from the policy-making industry which act as consultants to them all that have arisen over the years. There is actually a school or two within our universities who specialize in government and policy that are commonly consulted by both sides of these issues. And, the special interest groups, lobbyists and international serving consultant firms are also influencing the policies and the applications of those policies through their individual and collective efforts.

Overall, the staff of the Congressional and Senate offices are more likely to be involved in sorting out the varied approaches to different issues like this one which will tend to include information from other sources in the reports they provide to the Congressmen and Senators. That information can include information from the Energy Committee for instance, that may overwhelmingly support (as in the case of Libya) a trade-off in foreign policy principles in order to satisfy the desires of the petroleum industries who want to harvest the oil reserves in that country, engineering firms who want to do business there, equipment manufacturers who want their products to be used there, the Chamber of Commerce representing businesses generally and the Petroleum Institute who serves to promote the overall interests of their industry.

These reports and briefs are put together, sometimes by think-tanks and academic institutions for the legislators and the party policy-makers as well, or analyzed by the special interest groups and policy consultant firms that hover around Washington. Sometimes, these are provided in their entirety to the Congressional members and Senate offices, and sometimes (probably more often) they are offered as a bullet list focused brief with the analysis condensed and simplified with back-up charts and data which seem to support whatever position offered. Normally, these provide intellectual arguments and data to sully support for any other position at the same time intentionally swaying the reader to think in their desired terms – most are very one-sided supporting whatever position that is in their best interest.

So, the third thing that American taxpayers can do is to find these sources of policy online and discuss it with them. Let the academics, think-tanks, political party policy-makers, policy consulting firms and special interest groups understand what we want or don’t want our money to be doing. Or, to explain to these policy sources that we expect both the things to get done that need to get done while at the same time honoring those principles upon which our nation is founded. The policies set forth by legislators as well as by businesses, industries, special interest groups, and policy-makers in our political parties can be set up to do both. It appreciably gets lost in the mix if none of us are saying anything to them about it directly.

Fourth, the other thing that people can do in America is to put a stop to it entirely. We can solve problems in other ways which are allowing our nation to be put at the mercy of other nations whose brutality we don’t want to support. That means using something other than gasoline, for instance. Those political parties and specific legislators who trade off our national principles for the support of brutal dictators for any reason can be publicized for those decisions and voted out of the seat they are warming. The special interest groups and industry representatives that are supporting those kinds of trade-offs can be publicized in that light and then removed from the list of those places where our money is donated. And, if it turns out that money we are giving to one special interest group is going eventually into supporting another group whose influence intentionally supports denying our founding principles and social responsibilities – then we can publicize that fact and stop giving them our money, our churches’ money, our charitable moneys, and enter a discussion with the initial organization funneling money into another one about our concerns. And, tell others about it.

When people give to support veterans’ needs, that money should not end up going eventually into another pool of money that abrogates programs for the veterans whether it is the Tea Party, the conservatives, the Republican Party or whatever else they funneled that money to finally. Those trails can be located through their websites and tell others about it. If all else fails, and reasonable discussions are not making any difference, then suits can be filed against them to explain that money can’t be taken for one thing and then used to do exactly the opposite. For that, they are responsible in how those funds are used and where they end up going and what gets supported when the final analysis is done.

Fifth, as fun as it is as a way to meet others, supporting protests about these things if an extreme and questionable choice but certainly does feel better than sitting at a computer engaging in discussions about it with people who basically are getting paid to serve the support of whatever policy position in order to get paid for what they do.

It would probably be easier to twitter that, “this jackass just voted to support including arms sales to psycho whomever that slaughtered 43,000 people last year. pass it on.”

I don’t know.

– cricketdiane

***

Specific to Mr. Qaddafi and his sons – their financial wealth is being located and frozen. However, since the Qaddafi regime is still in place and intends to continue in the style to which they have become accustomed, there are actually some things that US citizens can do about that. First, make sure that there is nowhere on this planet that doesn’t know what kind of human beings they are. Second, make sure that the wealthy who have hosted them, fawned over them, treated them like gods, and partied with them understand that none of us think that is okay nor acceptable. Third, let our government leaders know that trading off our principles in order to do business with those insatiably cruel, malicious regimes is unacceptable and that our tax dollars are not to be used to support any such thing. And, fourth – make sure that the strength of our conviction about it is heard everywhere around the world including at the tables of the IMF, at the World Bank, at the European Parliament, at the tables of the United Kingdom leadership, at the United Nations, at the policy-making foundations and organizations throughout the US and around the world, at the treasuries of every national decision-making body and at the NGOs, Industries, Corporations, Businesses and Political Parties that have in the past, supported them. It is not kind of okay. It is not okay at all.

If there is anything that you find online about the Qaddafi regime, the Libya Investment Authority, the Qaddafi sons and their shenanigans or where they have met with anyone in the past – and you stumble over it while looking at something online in the news or in some investors’ information, or looking at some public relations or consulting firm or Wall Street firm that has bragged about it in the past – then ship it over to the UN Secretariat with the link and to the US State Department. It only takes a few minutes to do that and then if it is something they haven’t known already, they can find those resources and take charge of them for the Libyan people. The same thing is true for the Mabarak fortune which is still being tracked around the world. These things are simple enough. It is time to say that we aren’t going to put up with it anymore.

And, if you find any photos online of Qaddafi and his regime members, family members, sons and daughter being worshiped by our business leaders, our political leaders, our industry members, our corporate CEOs, our wealthiest and powerful, our political party members – then publicly share those and the links where they can be found. If you find evidence in written materials from the past, and photos of the brutality, cruelties and torture of these regimes, publish it, forward it, blog about it and tell others where the information can be found. The ICC and UN Secretariat is working to locate some of these things and keeping them current information rather than lost in something from 1986 somewhere – will be helpful when they start to look for it as they build these cases against this brutality.

Computer, at that point, was a job title, not a machine. Long before the sisters were businesswomen, community activists, mothers or grandmothers, they were recruited by the U.S. military to do ballistics research. They worked six days a week, sometimes pulling double or triple shifts, along with dozens of other women.

The weapons trajectories they calculated were passed out to soldiers in the field and bombardiers in the air. Some of their colleagues went on to program the earliest of general-purpose computers, the ENIAC.

( . . . )

The war ended in 1945, but within a couple months of arriving in Philadelphia, Bartik was hired to work on a related project — an electronic computer that could do calculations faster than any man or woman. The Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer, created by Penn scientists John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert Jr., weighed more than 30 tons and contained about 18,000 vacuum tubes. It recognized numbers, added, subtracted, multiplied, divided and a few other basic functions.

Men had built the machine, but Bartik and her colleagues debugged every vacuum tube and learned how to make it work, she said. Early on, they demonstrated to the military brass how the computer worked, with the programmers setting the process into motion and showing how it produced an answer. They handed out its punch cards as souvenirs. They’d taught the massive machine do math that would’ve taken hours by hand.

But none of the women programmers was invited to the celebratory dinner that followed. Later, the heard they were thought of as models, placed there to show off the machine.

Rediscovering WWII’s female ‘computers’

February 08, 2011|By Jamie Gumbrecht, CNN

***

My Note –

How many teachers in schools across America know that some of the greatest mathematicians in their classes of students are the girls?

How many classrooms of students hold the greatest scientists and engineers that happen to be the girls in the class rather than the boys alone? How many of our educators know that as they face that class and work with those students?

Hmmmm…….

Sometimes I wonder.

It was great finding this article. There are four pages to it which is a little hard to notice because the next page numbers are below some ads and rather small – but definitely take a look at all four pages. It is absolutely amazing.

and there is even more about women in the first programming languages of computers, too. We wouldn’t have the computers we have today, had it not been for the efforts of the women who participated in the process along the way.

Which I read and then copied over to the document. And, then popped over to another tab with the pdf from about the Commerce Department from a link on that page while going to the nice slide/share page from the White House where the link for comments had taken me on the original tab.

Here is the other link to the Commerce Department request for comments –

Then I made a comment – which, as usual posted without one paragraph marked in it as seems to happen on every one of the government sites for some reason.

And, of course – in order to share my comment on the slide/share site, I had to sign up for it through Facebook and allow the two to do their sharing of informational content – and I just plain decided, what the hell – it hardly matters at this point, so I did that such that my comment could actually go to them. (more or less – my guess is that they all have other things to do besides reading my comments on the matter.)

But, here is what I wanted to share with them and posted there -

I appreciate the need to study what research is being done in light of what is being most productive or most effective, but I really think that is part of the problem. The way it is set up now, our government and state resources are going into studying studies on top of studies of studies of things that had already been studied in their measure in the first place. Not only, to get funding are the basis and benefits of the research provided but, also as the research continues to its peer reviews and eventually into the investment community and the marketplace. Throughout that process, there are multiple stages at which the usefulness of the research is having to be justified and then at every opportunity there are more Science Foundation, State, Federal and International funds being put into studying whether it was worth doing the studies and research in the first place. All of those funds could have been spent to do something else valuable including taking that research being done originally into a manufacturing context for our nation’s businesses to be built with it – or something.

It reminds me of the filters that were researched and engineered to put on smokestacks of various industries many years ago which would have cost about $200 each to place on the polluting facilities – but industries and businesses didn’t want to do it. So, to save money and not be told what they could or could not do, they insisted that the government put money into studying the problem and that the states and academic research groups study whether the initial studies and engineering were valid. And, then they studied it some more and paid a team of lawyers and many years of lobbyists and pr firms to keep from even the suggestion of installing those filters. And, then at the point at which it would have cost about $2500 each to install those filter systems, they did the same thing again and didn’t install them at that point either. But, a multitude of studies were made again and new studies made along with new lobbying and pr campaigns. Eventually, the filters were either placed on the smokestacks at a cost of (more or less) $25,000 a piece or the companies moved what they were doing to another country which is putting up with them polluting whatever population is in that country where they are now.

The amount of money, time and efforts spent on the example above far exceeds what could have been done with that situation in the first place if the original science and engineering had been accepted and several hundred filters had simply been placed on the smokestacks. And, beyond that least costly choice – further updates to the science and engineering could have built forward in better efficiency and better opportunities for our nation in the meantime with cleaner air, better health in our population and better quality of life.

This is a long-winded way of saying that some of the problems we have now with innovation and seeing those innovations to the marketplace, of creating startup businesses and having opportunities for all Americans to start a business, if they want to do that – are literally problems built into, not only the mindset, but the ways that things are being done currently and for the better part of the last thirty years in America.

In a way, it could be said, (to be fair), that doing things in the manner described in the example above does yield a number of businesses and opportunities that simply breed out of doing it that way, but the cost of it has been to have wasted years and dollars with no greater nor timely solutions to show for it. And, to do it that way has made us look foolish in the eyes of the world and to have wasted time, national resources and the efforts of many great minds, great engineers, a great deal of money, talents, knowledge, resources and great science on innovations and research being used that way. Part of the losses in opportunity costs is that our nation’s leaders and business decision-makers have been doing things this way without yielding a wider array of solutions to a great many things that really needed their attention and that continue to need our nation’s intellectual assets applied to them.

We are already a nation of studying the studies of the things we’ve already studied. To do any more of that is just a waste. Either the rational justification to fund the study was appropriate enough to have funded it in the first place or it wasn’t. Our efforts need to be re-focused to use those innovative discoveries that have resulted from the research our national assets have already paid to produce and get those into applications in the marketplace.

I would say what is required to start a business from where I sit in America and the absolutely impossible hindrances, obstacles and obscene legislated requirements and complexities that have been set in the way for nearly every American to start a business, but it is just about enough to fill an entire book. It is no wonder that people get disgusted with it – the playing field is not level, the competition within the US is not fair, the risks are massive and the returns are questionable at best.

And, then even if everything is done right and goes well, its only purpose is to provide a profitable exit strategy for any number of investors who want to pull their money out plus a 3-5 times return on it within two or three years of having funded it. What is the point in that?

– cricketdiane

Thanks for asking though.

**

My Note here –

They had these four questions on the Commerce Department document which I read before contributing my comment above and really only had an interest in the first two questions right now –

Government research and development: How can the economic impacts of basic research funding (e.g., NSF, NIH) be better measured and evaluated? What methods can the Federal Government use to prioritize funding areas of basic research, both within an area of science and across areas of science? How can existing Federal government institutions (not just organizations, but also programs, policies, and laws) devoted to basic research and innovation be improved? Are there new institutions of these types that are needed to achieve national innovation goals? How could the government increase support for industry-led, pre-competitive R&D?

Entrepreneurship: Through what measures can government policy better facilitate the creation and success of innovative new businesses? What obstacles limit entrepreneurship in America, and which of these obstacles can be reduced through public policy? What are the most important policy, legal, and regulatory steps that the federal government could take to expand access to capital for high-growth businesses?

Intellectual Property: What are the key elements of any legal reform effort that would ensure that our intellectual property system provides timely, high-quality property rights and creates the best incentives for commercial innovation? How can the intellectual property system better serve the dual goals of creating incentives for knowledge creation while also ensuring that knowledge is widely diffused and adopted and moves to its best economic and societal uses?

Education: How important is catalyzing greater interest and training in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields? What strategies can be most effective on this score? Can educational technologies be better utilized to this end? What are the critical opportunities and limitations to the creation and adoption of effective education technologies? How can investments in community colleges better leverage public-partnerships to better train Americans for the jobs of today and tomorrow?

There has to be a better way to prioritize Federal and State research dollars than to study the studies again and again and again. It has made an entire industry of studying without ever doing anything with any of it at this point.

That is one thing. The other is that I’ve noticed in China, Japan, and a few other nations, they are investing in R&D with an eye to get results, returns and revenues from them in twenty years from now, or in fifty years from the time money was put into it, and in some cases, maybe even longer periods of time. By doing that, they have been able to reap returns and revenues from those things very quickly – say in two-five years. That is because they are putting a lot of money into it and into continuing the funding of it in an ongoing basis without expectations that it must show any immediate returns to be taken out of it as justification for it to continue.

The advantage of doing it that way and at one time in this country we had done it that way is in being able to cull the harvest from it quickly when those discoveries and breakthroughs are made. There is enough money underwriting it for the science to get done, for the engineering to get done, for the confirmation of results to be made, for safety considerations to be checked and for market applications to be designed as well as creating the manufacturing systems to mass produce whatever it is.

In the manner that the US has been doing it for the last thirty – fifty years, if a product cannot justify itself or if an avenue of research cannot justify itself within a very short period of time (usually less than two years) with a substantial return of profitable revenues, then it is dropped and not proceeded further. That is costing us.

Those patents and research avenues are being sold in fire sales by brokers and corporations just to get rid of them and the profits they would have made for the US and our national business community is lost.

Investors want a short term return. Companies want a short term guaranteed return. Corporations and banks want short term guaranteed returns. And, innovation by its very nature is not guaranteed by the successes of what has come before it. As an example, the track record of auto sales generally cannot begin to prove to a banker, investor or corporate entity that innovative electric cars or hybrid cars will be guaranteed sales. So, therefore – the tendency is to put all the resources in cookie cutter fashion into what has already been proven over that which has not.

There has also been a tendency toward very shady, inappropriate strategies in many industries and businesses to grab up those innovations that are available intending no use for them whatsoever to simply keep them out of the marketplace where others might use those things in competition with them. The invention of a battery system heavy duty enough for commercial vehicles, small trucks, light duty transportation uses and long-range passenger cars was available for a number of years and could have been incorporated into all manner of vehicles but the patent was tied up by one of the large automotive companies (Dodge, I think it was) so that it couldn’t be used in competition with them. There are a number of situations like that which have hindered, and halted innovations being applied in the marketplace. In America, that is considered the way to do good business. And, I suppose it is except for the long-term costs of doing it that way.

When the monopoly thinking takes over, it doesn’t seem to hurt anything in the immediate experience. There are profits. Others can’t compete effectively (at least using that one avenue.) And, everyone appears to be happy – shareholders are happy, Wall Street is happy, business magazines and colleges telling about it seem happy, the customers aren’t being hurt in any way and generally, everything seems good and okay about it. But, the reasons that we have had laws about it and particularly, against many of those business practices in our history is because those strategies do cause harm, not only in the long-run but to our national interests, as well. Our nation is reeling from the disadvantages of doing many, many things that way.

Now, rather than having a multitude of small businesses selling gasoline, for instance, with its variety of Mom and Pop shops, we have national and international companies, franchises and huge conglomerates with all of those resources and revenues. Well, it was a trade-off and we let those big companies monopolize the marketplace. We are living with the results of what we traded-off to get, for better or worse. We are suffering those disadvantages, one of which was watching the gas prices go up every fifteen or twenty minutes on the retail gas outlets when the prices speculators were pushing for barrels of crude oil went higher in the summer of 2008 and then when the barrel prices went down, the retail prices started to shuffle downwards sometimes weeks later by a few pennies at a time.

That is a disadvantage. And, companies, families, communities, distributors, small businesses, medium-sized businesses, food suppliers, retailers, truckers and even airlines (eventually) suffered for it. And, many of the other disadvantages and obstacles that have been created in our marketplace for Americans to start their own businesses, innovate, invent, create or grow their own businesses have been caused by some of the same kinds of choices made by businesses too big to fail, but too small not to lobby.

In fact, imagine what happens when I want to create a business. There is a need that I see for a person to be able to go into any store and buy something which would show up at another store in another state or another location across town. I know their computers are tied together and they are part of the same corporate entity. But, I also know that they are sometimes franchise stores, that their inventory systems are not necessarily the same in every state and that their financial systems do not integrate from store to store. I think this could be fixed with a bit of software which could be designed and then sold to the store’s corporate headquarters to do this job for them. It would serve their customers. It would serve my needs and my family’s needs when we want to buy groceries or formula for for a daughter or son or grandbaby or friend or someone somewhere in some other state. It would allow us to purchase a fan or heater or air conditioner here where we live that they could go to their local store and simply pick up to have it right now on the same day. We could buy tires for their car when the tires are so bald that they aren’t safe anymore and pay for them to be picked up near the college where they are living or in the state where they decided to runoff to in order to have some freedom from us.

It is true, that between what I know and what other people who can do programming know, that we could create the software to do this. That is a fact. It is a good innovation. That is also a fact. I can even write a business plan to show how it would make money and project revenues for it with something less than a lie and fairly close to the reality of what costs it would have and sales it could make. However, then what happens? The state where I live wants to have a number of registrations for who I am and what I am doing with it in a business sense. The local municipalities want a business license to be registered. To protect the concept, I have to not tell anybody but in some way protect it through the intellectual property registrations that are available. I have to give it a snappy name that is easy to remember and not over two syllables. I would need to be able to tell somebody about it in 30 seconds using what amounts to about two sentences of very easy to remember information that includes where they can get it. And, then I have to go over to the SBA, the banks, the angel investors, or some group of family members, none of which think I can get my socks on right, let alone do something with a business effectively. And, here I would sit with that nice software designed to do a specific, much needed, very commercial, innovative thing with its snappy name and 30 second spiel to tell someone about it. Then, with another $250,000 to run around the country and pitch it to every chain store – I would have some sales of it or licensing for it to those stores, maybe. If they didn’t simply tell me they weren’t interested and then get on the phone after I leave and have somebody over at the nearest college design it for them to use while I’m on my way home.

And, I didn’t even mention that my credit would have to be sterling, which it isn’t, my character would have to have proof of being sterling for the last fifty years out of fifty two, which it isn’t and everything else that would need to be done correctly would have to be done correctly before anyone would begin to want to put money into it to get it going. I mean, that trademarks for the name and copyrights purchased, any patents required would have to have at least provisional patents applied for and all the legal things of being a business generally. And, then – the investors, potential partners or anyone else getting into it would want guarantees that they would get substantial returns for using their money. Then in two years, they would want their money back plus the returns they were told to expect or more. And, at that point – either more money to keep it growing would have to be located or the whole thing would go bankrupt and end up sold for pennies on the dollar.

It wasn’t on that list of things above – but there is also money required to market, to tell people about it, to promote it, to have a website about it, to tell industry leaders about it, to go sell it, to go pitch it to companies and industries that might use it, to run around networking with others who might tell others about it, and to have a team of attorneys fight to keep my ownership of it, because whether another company or group actually has the same thing before I did or not, they can say they did and then it is my responsibility to prove them wrong in courts. Oh yeah – and I’d have to have collateral to put up such as property or a huge savings account or stocks or bonds or who knows what and I don’t have any of that. And, if I did have any of that I wouldn’t need to borrow money to put a business together in the first place.

Oh yeah – and one other thing, right off the top of my head – when the stores would use the software that I and a team designed that my business is selling and they do end up collecting information about their customers who are using it and then the store sells that information – it could very well be a liability against the software manufacturer rather than against the retailer’s behavior and choices which would also take a team of lawyers to fix. The fact that things like that could tie up resources and time and efforts and public goodwill in courts and fooferrah makes it a possibly risky choice even after doing everything right, if everything to satisfy the law is done and everything else required actually works.

A couple days ago, Mr. T. Boone Pickens was on a CNN show – probably Larry King, and stated that the best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago and the second best time to plant that tree is today (paraphrased – but close). I want to say –

We planted a tree thirty years ago and now we have “trees” of green technologies, alternative fuels and alternative energy systems, new battery technologies, electric cars and various other solar, wind, geothermal and clean coal systems that did not exist in enough study and capacity before that. We have these things. We have better hydropower generating turbines, systems for ocean wave and tidal generating power systems, for geothermal systems and for transportation choices where the work has already been done to design, to study, to create manufacturing systems for them, to alter them to fit specific situations and extremes – and on and on . . .

So, those trees have been planted long ago. Most of them are mature now in forests of many trees also planted throughout these years. What we don’t have is the need for them as evidenced by the fact that they are not adopted, not funded, not pushed forward, not accepted and not wholly put into use.

I don’t know how to fix that. There are multiple choices which simply could be on the menu both for leaders when deciding and for individuals although most of those new technologies are not handily available for individuals to pursue – and for whatever reason, when decision-making occurs – these are not on the menu of choices (especially for leaders at any level of funding and decision-making.)

That is a continuing problem which brings me back to the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the filthy air from our transporting ourselves one by one with cars and encouraging developing economies to do the same, polluted lands and air and water such that many days in a multitude of places where walking outside is dangerous and eating fish from those waters is damaging to health and playing in the dirt is a nightmare whether gardening or digging to China with a spoon. We have mines exploding, oil rigs sinking, bizarre sudden flash flooding in places where it had never been, horrendous fires and drought that shouldn’t be occurring, deep and violent snows and blizzards, melting ice in glaciers that would’ve been in place for another 100 million years before changing, and tremendous loss of life in every preventable arena.

Still, here we are – same choices, same menu. What I see with some clarity is that there are two really big problems that must have immediate attention. One of those problems is how we organize ourselves and our resources to approach quickly and efficiently to challenge disasters successfully. And, second – that everything possible, everything known, everything that could be and everything from throughout the world and throughout history along with everything that is just now be created – needs to be on the list of options available to use in the situations in front of us – whatever those situations might be and however dire (or far-reaching.)

If we could fix those two things, we could probably fix the rest of them. We would have the tools to move forward and solve the problems and crisis that are occurring, in a much more proficient and successful (and timely) manner. We could incorporate decisions to include things that are available into the mix which right now are being expected for some other time, some other place, some other event, some other situation somewhere in the future. But, they are available and could be used right now.

I don’t care how used to the same old answers our systems and leaders may be – without embracing these new things (some of which are twenty or thirty years old) as part of the available assets to bring to bear upon these things creating crisis around us – we are sure to continue sustaining the incredible, disheartening and expensive losses that we’ve been seeing throughout this time.

That is, after all – why the new ways to do things and new concepts and new ideas and new solutions were created in the first place. They were an answer to the known difficulties and failures and problems and crisis parameters where we failed at times before this. They are the innovations and solutions created to solve it.

And, it was my understanding that President Obama was going to address the people of the United Kingdom also and I haven’t found it yet. It would’ve been after the address to America and before meeting with the BP executives and chairman of the board. I don’t know – maybe he didn’t – I’ll keep looking.

Here is one of the things I was wondering today – what are the states doing with the money they were given to prepare and protect the coast before the oil came this close – and did they spend it or use it for budget deficits – or spend it on advertisements trying to con people that everything is fine?

Also – each state has emergency funds of their own in their budgets and access to other funds for emergencies – and about eight times now, at least – President Obama has said for the states to bring forward their national guard and they aren’t doing it – Why? And, then they complain about not having the people to tackle this – why aren’t they bringing the resources to bear upon this that are available to them at the state and local levels?

Every two towns could share a tractor to get the oil up off the beach like the one in several news stories being used on one beach. That definitely is within their means to do. Any of the towns, counties and parishes could be buying the tiger dams or NOAQ type protective booms / containment type systems and place them – any of these cities, towns and counties could be purchasing the types of equipment that are needed and placing them along with bringing up their National Guard which takes a bit of time to call up, stage and place.

BP gave the state a $25 million grant to address short-term expenses. The items below refer to how the state has spent or intends to spend that money. About $2.5 million of the BP money spent by agencies in the early stages of the response is not included below.

The state also has Pollution Removal Fund Authorizations to spend $16.7 million from the federal Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund, a federal program overseen by the National Pollution Funds Center under the Coast Guard.

(etc.)

Here is a breakdown of how state agencies are spending these BP and federal trust fund resources as of June 15.

Department of Wildlife & FisheriesTrust Fund: $5,769,078 for preventing and minimizing negative impacts of fisheries and wildlife, public safety protection, maritime security and crime prevention and detection. Assist with identification of fisheries and wildlife impact areas.BP grant: $3.1 million for enforcement and situational awareness including patrol vessels. $1.6 million for fisheries including motors, trailers, trucks, landing craft; ATVs and a bioremediation contract. $1.2 million for Wildlife division including a crew boat, quarter barge, airboats, bay boat and outboard motors.

Attorney General Buddy CaldwellBP grant: $5 million for state legal costs.

Department of Public Safety & CorrectionsTrust Fund: $1.5 million for State Police for designated primary responders, command staff related to event, financial liaison with federal and responsible party funds. $349,290 for corrections division for wildlife preservation in the cleaning of contaminated birds and wildlife.BP grant: $960,595 for State Police for equipment and supplies including emergency response and patrol vehicles and inflatable flotation device, 20 kilowatt trailer-mounted generator, thermal imaging equipment and atmospheric monitoring equipment. $1,580,000 in IT support including wireless communication that expands capacity and coverage for first responders in coastal areas, point-to-point wireless links, computer hardware and software, credentialing system and wireless monitoring system. $340,000 for the Office of State Fire Marshall which includes emergency response vehicles, office equipment and a variety of safety equipment (chemical gloves, boots, level b suits) and GPS devices.

Department of Social ServicesBP grant: $3.1 million to implement a comprehensive technical support plan for businesses and workers and fund coastal organizations with capacity to provide education, financial analysis and support for claims assistance.

Louisiana National Guard and Department of Military AffairsTrust fund: $394,178 to support removal activities of National Guard, staging areas for Guard units, support of local civil authorities and support of emergency response mission.BP grant: $2 million in supplies and equipment.

Office of Coastal Protection and RestorationTrust fund: $1,807,200 to formulate defense strategies for coastal areas, evaluate response options for oil spill removal in wetlands and on barrier islands and support other agency responses.

Department of Transportation and DevelopmentTrust fund: $97,058 for support of first responders related to truck permit issuance, structural capacity analysis concerning heavy equipment needs and for operating equipment as needed.

Department of Economic DevelopmentBP grant: $220,000 for increased public services.

Department of AgricultureTrust fund: $34,967 to monitor drinking water for cattle and potential impact to agriculture in affected areas.

BP Announces Second Block Grant of $25 Million to the State of Mississippi

Release date: 10 June 2010

Today BP announced it is providing the State of Mississippi with an additional $25 million grant to continue implementation of the State’s Area Contingency Plan.

This $25 million grant is in addition to a previous $25 million block grant that BP announced on May 5 to help accelerate the implementation of the State’s Area Contingency Plan, and a $15 million tourism grant announced on May 17.

“Working in partnership with the State is important to an effective spill response. So we are pleased to make these additional funds available per the Governor’s request,” said Doug Suttles, BP’s Chief Operating Officer, Exploration and Production.

“This money will be used to ensure we’re aggressive in attacking any part of the spill that comes our way and to provide additional protection for our most environmentally sensitive areas along our coastline,” said Governor Haley Barbour. “This also prevents us from tapping into state money to fight the spill, and I appreciate BP’s timely response to our request.”

This additional grant is another example of BP’s commitment to help mitigate the impact of the oil and gas spill from the MC252 well on the State of Mississippi.

BATON ROUGE — A Senate committee is weighing whether to side with the Gov. Bobby Jindal and strip Gulf oil spill response money in a state budget bill for coastal parishes in favor of seeking direct payment from BP.

The $24.9 million provision for the parishes is likely to be changed when the panel passes the budget legislation today, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Mike Michot said.

Gov. Bobby Jindal said that the parishes should get their response money directly from BP rather than trying to tap the state’s $25 million grant from the company. The state has spent some of the BP money, and the Governor’s Office released details Monday of what state agencies want to buy with the remainder.

Even if such plans were made, the timing of when money would trickle down to the parishes, and whether it would arrive in time for the parishes to use it during the defense phase of the oil spill, is unclear.

BP in May gave five southeastern coastal parishes $1 million each and also granted $500,000 each to Orleans and St. Tammany parishes, but local officials say that money will run out soon, if it hasn’t already. Personnel overtime, fuel costs and emergency operations center costs are among the financial drains. Rather than giving new grants, BP started a program to assess the details of the needs of each parish on a monthly basis.

Parish officials recently reported a lack of money to pay for hazmat suits, skimmers, suctions, extra spotting vessels, water current or oil-impact analyses, boom and vessel repairs and other items.

The resource shortage complicates their problems, because they need to act fast when materials become available. Some parishes are considering hiring materials brokers that would bear the financial responsibility up front with the expectation of parish payment later, if BP makes a reimbursement.

The state is getting federal financial backing for extensive National Guard operations with about 1,100 personnel to spot oil sheens and build land bridges, special dams and sand barriers.

Mississippi and Alabama have used their BP grants to give money directly to their coastal counties.

Jindal’s office on Monday released a list of items that Louisiana agencies plan to purchase using the state’s $25 million BP grant. For example, the Department of Wildlife and Fisheries will spend $3.1 million for “enforcement and situational awareness” including patrol vessels; $1.6 million for motors, trailers, trucks, landing craft and a bio-remediation contract; and $1.2 million for a crew boat, barge, airboats, bay boats and outboard motors.

The Department of Social Services will spend $3.1 million to “implement a comprehensive technical support plan for businesses and workers” and assist coastal organizations in relief efforts. The Department of Public Safety needs about $1 million for emergency response equipment such as patrol vehicles, generators and atmospheric monitoring devices and $1.6 million for wireless communication and information technology support.

Louisiana state agencies also have been provided $11 million through the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund, a program run by the National Pollution Funds Center under the Oil Pollution Act. The fund can be tapped to provide upfront money to national, state and local agencies while the federal authority pursues compensation from the companies responsible for the spill.

The fund has been a primary source of public and private compensation for about 11,000 oil spills since 1990, but its has been a mostly ancillary tool for financing the Deepwater Horizon response in favor of direct appeals to BP. Congress is working on legislation to make the federal oil spill fund larger and easier to tap.

Louisiana House members two weeks ago added an amendment to the state supplemental budget bill for the current year that authorizes $24.9 million divided among the coastal parishes from the state’s Oil Spill Contingency Fund, which is a depository for the state’s BP grant, federal aid and potentially other sources of pollution control financing.

So, I guess the list above this article in the more recent article from the same source is essentially what they’ve decided to do. Where are cattle drinking from the oil polluted water (sea water) of the Gulf of Mexico? They are insane and it is no wonder there is oil in the marshes. They knew to protect it – they had the money to do it. They had the boats and local fishermen and volunteers that would help do it. What they hell are they doing?

– cricketdiane

***

and, the Federal government is covering the costs of the National Guard but the states aren’t calling them up all this time – even when they’ve been told to do it? Are they considering why the state police need an array of toys like that list above when the same money could’ve kept the crude oil from the marshes, bays, beaches, coves and ports in Louisiana?

These state and local politics, agency politics and systems of misadjustment to the current situation are costing more damage than BP has already – which is certainly hard to fathom but nevertheless the truth.

What started as a small, horrendous but possibly manageable situation is made worse at every level by the ways in which it is being accepted and handled or not handled effectively at all. The states had the money to work with throughout this process and they know what else can be done to access money for handling it. Why would they misdirect the funds and resources in the midst of something as long-reaching in consequences and as disastrous in immediate consequences as this?

I think their priorities are askew.

***

So, we have oil industries and spill response contractors that did have a huge array of options available to them and simply didn’t incorporate any of them into the plans or logistics or put them on standby where something might happen. We have states that are choosing to pretend that this money is available to do something else rather than fight the oil spill including the use of it to study things that have absolutely nothing to do with the problems at hand and to buy toys for agencies and police / security forces in their state that won’t be required for this since most of it is redundant with material assets already on the ground through the Coast Guard, NOAA and others.

And, we have political parties getting into the mix for their own agendas that resemble little or no good sense about the dangers of the situation that is unfolding and what might be needed for it in an immediate and timely manner who are using the situation and the funding for the situation to pursue their own goals rather than the public good.

And, we have a botched up command and resource system that is hindering the proper, appropriate and timely placement of needed equipment where it is needed with what seems like mostly a very close-minded and inept system incapable of effectively interacting with the event nor with participants and feedback of what is needed, what is working and where it is required.

Hmmmm…………

– cricketdiane

***

Let’s see what else I can find –

BP gives $75M to 3 Gulf states for spill efforts

(AP) – 6 days ago

NEW ORLEANS — BP PLC will give $75 million in grants to Alabama, Florida and Mississippi as they respond to the nation’s worst oil spill.

BP COO Doug Suttles said in a statement Thursday that the energy giant was making the funds available at the request of the governors in each of the three Gulf states.

Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour says the grant will fund additional protection for the most environmentally sensitive stretches of his state’s coastline. It will also prevent Mississippi from using its own money to fight the oil spill.

The leak began April 20 after an oil rig exploded off the Gulf of Mexico, killing 11 workers. The government has estimated 600,000 to 1.2 million gallons are leaking per day, although those estimates could soon be revised.

Steel pipe boom for Perdido Pass ahead of schedule, says firm

A $4.6 million project to erect a sturdy boom of steel pipe at Perdido Pass is ahead of schedule and could be finished in another week, said John Baker, president of Thompson Engineering, the firm designing the system.

Meanwhile, work to fill a mile-wide breach on Dauphin Island created by Hurricane Katrina was described Monday by a BP spokesman as imminent.

BP PLC owns the Deepwater Horizon well, which has been spewing oil into the Gulf of Mexico since April 20.

Little oil washed ashore Monday along the coasts of Mobile and Baldwin counties, with only a few tar balls reported on Dauphin Island and Gulf Shores.

The Perdido Pass project calls for extending a barrier of large pipes filled with foam for more than half a mile to prevent oil from pushing into wetlands and waterways to the north.

The water current and wave action in the pass are too strong for conventional boom to be effective.

Crews are working from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m., Baker said. “It is a fairly dangerous operation in that type of environment to work at night.”

The floating pipes will be suspended from chains attached to two rows of pilings driven into the bottom of the pass, Baker said.

“We’re working 24/7 on pipe manufacturing and fabrication,” said Tony Smith, construction manager for Thompson Engineering.

Smith said he tried out a section of the boom Monday afternoon: “It floated just exactly like we predicted. So far, so good.”

The Baldwin County Commission identified more areas that need protection from oil and accepted another $3 million grant from the state to help do that.

The commission also voted to send a letter to Gov. Bob Riley, suggesting mechanized cleaning of all area beaches by BP contractors.

In May, BP gave states affected by the spill $25 million. Of that, Baldwin County got $3 million and used about $2 million of the money to buy protective boom and hire a contractor to place it in environmentally sensitive areas.

“The Mobile County Commission voted Monday to send a letter to BP asking it to hire more local boat owners to help with cleanup efforts. The commission will also send a letter requesting an additional $3 million to promote tourism in the county.”

(from the above article)

my note

(***(

Although this doesn’t have to do with the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico – it is an interesting oversight of the vagaries occurring in the politics of the current situation – using funds intended to help with things –

This one is about the use of Federal Stimulus Money intended to help make green buildings and energy saving buildings and building systems –

Builders whose projects consume 15 percent less energy than the state standard will be getting a 25 percent reduction in the cost of their building permit, officials said.

The city is setting aside $100,000 from its $700,000 federal economic stimulus grant to reduce building fees. The biggest slice of the federal grant, $250,000, will pay for the hiring of a sustainability coordinator for two years.

At the same time, the city will impose a new fee that is 25 percent of the regular building permit fee to cover city costs for plan review and construction monitoring.

Napa has jettisoned the word “green,” preferring to label the new rules as promoting “high-performance buildings.”

Napa passes tougher green rules for new homes

What a pathetic joke. They are spending more for one person’s income than for the entire program.

Figures.

And assessing a new fee for the same amount as the one they are using $100,000 to defray not charging. It is bullshit. Somebody needs to arrest those jackasses for embezzling and mismanagement of Federal Stimulus funds. It is not the purpose for which they were intended and it is not a fair use of those funds in the ways they are approaching it. These are not for hiring one friend of the council at $250,000 a year to manage a theme.

– cricketdiane

***

The hearings with BP executive Tony Hayward just started. They are really questioning the wrong person. Some people from BP were on that rig who made the decisions which directly caused that explosion. They need to be there answering those questions or put in jail or both.

Those are the executives who literally killed those eleven men, injured seventeen others, destroyed the rig, and destroyed the entire coastal waters of the United States of America. There hasn’t been a terrorist aside from those involved in the 9/11 event who have done as severe a job on such a wide swath with as far-reaching damages. They need to be prosecuted – or is it only jay-walking and misdemeanors committed by the “small people” and the “little people” that are against the law in America?

– cricketdiane

***

Mr. Barton was so cavalier yesterday and today, that despite this horrendous despicable damage – continues to support using the courts for the payouts to people harmed by the oil disaster. It wouldn’t be just his opinion as he stated, considering that Michelle Bachman (R) Minnesota was on John King USA, on CNN last night repeating exactly the same thing. He needs to use an opinion that actually was thought through by him and not given to him by the party to whom he owes his life and allegiance rather than to the United States of America and the people of the United States.

Of course they (at the Republican Party) want the previous course of action through courts for which they want tort reform to reduce the amounts that can be given even when corporations are found guilty and at fault. The results of the twenty years of court cases in the Exxon Valdez spill, have only recently been completed with reductions in the payouts which left families completely devastated by this event to less than $8,000 each despite having lost everything including twenty plus years of their lives, their livelihoods, their health, their well-being and their opportunities to live as they had for many generations.

And that is what the Republican Party policy makers and conservative thinktanks want for this situation. In the meantime, the oil companies would continue as usual with the same nothing but devastation going to the families, communities and individuals affected by this for the next twenty or thirty years as their lives are decimated.

I don’t know how the Republican Party moved so far away from the principles and guidelines upon which it was founded. Something twisted that thinking to believe as they do now which serves no one but corporate entities without conscience in pursuit of their profits at any cost to human lives, to our nation, to our way of life, to our freedoms, in destruction of our personal rights and liberties, to the detriment of our health and well-being and to the destruction of our families and communities.

I was surprised to hear Mr. Barton claim an opinion that was so thoroughly the same as that propaganda which came from Ms. Bachman last night. Does he have two brain cells that can work together or is he waiting for the Republican Party to tell him how to wipe his own ass, as well? And to tell him what it means, and to tell him how to do it and to tell him what he knows about why to do it and when to do it and what to use to do it and what he thinks about it? When does it stop?

Maybe it is time to replace people like Mr. Barton and Ms. Bachman with a simple machine that can repeat the Republican Party talking points – we could use one of those automatons the Japanese have been creating and give their seat to someone that can actually do the job instead of furthering their desire to serve a political party rather than the people of the United States and our national interests.

It was never in our national interest to exclude all other types of energy sources and transportation fuels for predominantly one exclusively.

- cricketdiane, 06-17-10

***

Shutup Mr. Gingrey

If you and your Republican friends had ever been concerned about foreign oil – we would all be driving cars using either electricity made at home, solar power made at home, hydrogen power made at home, steam power made at home, or natural gas made at home. You asshole.

***

Negative-Emissions Vehicle Concept From China’s SAIC: A Plant On Wheels!

By nature, plants absorb carbon dioxide from the atomsphere, and release oxygen. This is good. This is how the ecosystem is supposed to work. Plants like this. Human bodies like this. In contrast, petroleum burning vehicles consume oxygen during combustion and emit carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

Now if you’re thinking, “wait, that’s great–everything will balance out right?”, you’re partially correct (Rremember, humans consume oxygen and emit carbon dioxide too). The problem is, too much of a good thing is not such a good thing in this case. Specifically, automotive carbon emissions are at a level determined to be unhealty for the environment in general.

For this reason, automakers and government organizations have been focusing heavily on reducing the amount of carbon dioxide emissions produced by motor vehicles. So far, the best examples of green cars have managed to eliminate emissions. Hydrogen fuel cell and plug-in electric vehicles boast zero emissions. These technologies are becoming a reality right now, but the Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation (SAIC) of China has gone a step further with a concept that acually consumes C02, rather than emitting it.

Here’s how the YeZ works. A photoelectric converter is incorprated into the car’s leaf-shaped canopy, and collects energy from the Sun. This energy is converted to electricity, which powers a fully electric drivetrain. Wind power is even harvested from small windmills on all four wheels.

The vehicle’s body is constructed with metal-organic framework materials which absorb water and carbon dioxide (yes, this is the negative emissions bit). The YeZ then does three really cool things with the two naturally occurring resources. It generates electricity, air conditioning refrigerant, and… oxygen! The oxygen is diffused back into the air, where it should be. This process makes it the most plant-like car concept yet.

So, since the technology does exist, and it is available – why don’t we just harvest this technology and put it into use on our streets and highways along with what we already know from other designed alternative energy concepts? Why does America have to be last on the list or not show up to the party at all when it comes to making things better? Why are we last to innovate, last to create technological advances and last to adopt them? What happened to the culture of being the best, the first, the greatest? Why are we coming in dead last and often, not getting into gear at all?

It isn’t as if these things don’t exist as every single Republican whose opportunity for airtime has been at least partially used to tell us that nothing is ready to go and won’t be for years along with their executive friends in oil industries – who also surpass the Republican Party members in using their airtime to express how hopelessly stuck with them that we are for some time to come – according to their views of it. And, each of them fill pages of talk online, written materials, talking points, policy position papers and fill hours of committee time, legislators’ time and media airtime explaining how nothing can possibly be changed for many, many years to come – certainly not in the next twenty years or thirty years or fifty years. But that may not have even been true thirty years ago when they first started saying the same things – it certainly isn’t true now.

– cricketdiane, 06-17-10

***

Every technology available to us from around the world could be created in any plant facility in America and made available to everyone in the public for a reasonable price including cars that run on electricity, battery systems based on the new designs, solar cells for home electricity systems, cars made to take the carbon dioxide out of the air and remove it while traveling and using it for part of the energy / fuel needs, systems for sequestering and harvesting all of the many pollutants including methane from landfills to use for our county energy needs and reclaiming chemicals from industries rather than polluting with them, along with making natural gas tractor trailer trucks and buses converting them away from the diesel fuels that are making our planet and our nation uninhabitable.

All of it can be done. Hydrogen vehicles have already been designed, hydrogen power systems for homes have already been created, non-turbine wind driven power systems have been invented that take wind power and convert it to electricity, solar flexible films and roofing materials have already been made and tested, wave and tidal systems have already been innovated in a variety of ways to harness that power for electricity and there are numerous geothermal and solar designs and wind turbine designs and a variety of transportation mega-moving engine designs that don’t require one drop of petroleum. Why the hell can’t we stop using the same old choices as if they are the only ones – when they haven’t been the only choices for at least a hundred years and certainly are not the only choices now?

Relying on only petroleum has made our nation vulnerable and weakened. No terrorist could have done as efficient a job of bringing our nation to its knees as have the financial corruption, bankers, Wall Street firms and Republicans with their oil companies supporting them.

Having any one source or one thing that is necessary for our survival and growth as a nation leaves us at the mercy of that industry or supplier. Our leaders have always known that and it never mattered before today or we would be doing something else now.

***

During the Mercury missions of our space program, battery systems were designed which we could’ve been using in our cars every day since then. But, no – our business leaders, politicians and elected members of the United States didn’t want to do that.

2.1.2.1.1 PM10 LevelsThe current NAAQS for PM10 were established in 1987. The primary (health-based) and secondary (public welfare based) standards for PM10 include both short- and long-term NAAQS.The short-term (24-hour) standard of 150 :g/m3 is not to be exceeded more than once per yearon average over three years. The long-term standard specifies an expected annual arithmeticmean not to exceed 50 :g/m3 averaged over three years.

Currently, 29.3 million people live in PM10 nonattainment areas, including moderate and serious areas. There are presently 56 moderate PM10 nonattainment areas with a total population
of 6.6 million.[90]

There are 8 serious PM10 nonattainment areas with a total affected population of 22.7 million.

According to the Act, serious PM10 nonattainment areas must attain the standards no later than 10 years after designation. The initial serious PM10 nonattainment areas were designated January 18, 1994 and had an attainment date set by the Act of December 31, 2001. The Act provides that
EPA may grant extensions of the serious area attainment dates of up to 5 years, provided that the area requesting the extension meets the requirements of Section 188(e) of the Act.

Five serious PM10 nonattainment areas (Phoenix, Arizona; Clark County (Las Vegas), NV; Coachella Valley, South Coast (Los Angeles), and Owens Valley, California) have received extensions of the December 31, 2001 attainment date and thus have new attainment dates of December 31, 2006.
Many PM10 nonattainment areas continue to experience exceedances. Of the 29.3 million people living in designated PM10 nonattainment areas, approximately 24.5 million people are living in nonattainment areas with measured air quality violating the PM10 NAAQS in 2000-2002. Among these are 8 serious areas listed in Table 1.2-1 and 6 moderate areas: Nogales, AZ,
Imperial Valley, CA, Mono Basin, CA, Coso Junction, CA,B Ft. Hall, ID, and El Paso, TX.

Current PM2.5 monitored values for 2000-2002 indicate that 120 counties in which almost 65 million people live have annual design values that violate the PM2.5 NAAQS. In total, this represents 23 percent of the counties and 37 percent of the population with levels above the NAAQS in the areas with monitors that met completeness criteria. An additional 32 million people live in 91 counties that have air quality measurements within 10 percent of the level of the standard. These areas, though not currently violating the standard, will also benefit from the additional reductions from this rule in order to ensure long-term maintenance. There are another 204 counties where 21 million people live that had incomplete data.
Figure 2.1.2-1 is a map of currently available PM2.5 monitoring data, highlighting monitor locations near or above the annual PM2.5 NAAQS. As can be seen from this figure, high ambient levels are widespread throughout the East and California.

Acid deposition, or acid rain as it is commonly known, occurs when SO2 and NOx react in the atmosphere with water, oxygen, and oxidants to form various acidic compounds that later fall to earth in the form of precipitation or dry deposition of acidic particles.120 It contributes to damage of trees at high elevations and in extreme cases may cause lakes and streams to become
so acidic that they cannot support aquatic life.

In addition, acid deposition accelerates the decay of building materials and paints, including irreplaceable buildings, statues, and sculptures that are part of our nation’s cultural heritage. To reduce damage to automotive paint caused by acid rain and acidic dry deposition, some manufacturers use acid-resistant paints, at an average cost of $5 per vehicle—a total of near $80 million per year when applied to all new cars and trucks sold in the United States each year.
Acid deposition primarily affects bodies of water that rest atop soil with a limited ability to neutralize acidic compounds. The National Surface Water Survey (NSWS) investigated the effects of acidic deposition in over 1,000 lakes larger than 10 acres and in thousands of miles of streams. It found that acid deposition was the primary cause of acidity in 75 percent of the acidic lakes and about 50 percent of the acidic streams, and that the areas most sensitive to acid rain were the Adirondacks, the mid-Appalachian highlands, the upper Midwest and the high elevation West. The NSWS found that approximately 580 streams in the Mid-Atlantic Coastal Plain are acidic primarily due to acidic deposition.

Hundreds of the lakes in the Adirondacks surveyed in the NSWS have acidity levels incompatible with the survival of sensitive fish species. Many of the over 1,350 acidic streams in the Mid-Atlantic Highlands (mid-Appalachia)
region have already experienced trout losses due to increased stream acidity. Emissions from U.S. sources contribute to acidic deposition in Eastern Canada, where the Canadian government has estimated that 14,000 lakes are acidic. Acid deposition also has been implicated in contributing to degradation of high-elevation spruce forests that populate the ridges of the
Appalachian Mountains from Maine to Georgia. This area includes national parks such as the Shenandoah and Great Smoky Mountain National Parks.

EPA released its final “Health Assessment Document for Diesel Engine Exhaust” (the EPA Diesel HAD), referenced earlier. There, diesel exhaust was classified as likely to be carcinogenic to humans by inhalation at environmental exposures, in accordance with the revised draft 1996/1999 EPA cancer guidelines.[134]

In accordance with earlier EPA guidelines, diesel exhaust would be similarly classified as a probable human carcinogen (Group B1).[135], [136]. A number of other agencies (National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, the International Agency for Research on Cancer, the World Health Organization, California EPA, and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services) have made similar classifications.[137],[138],[139],[140],[141]

The Health Effects Institute has also made numerous studies and report on the potential carcinogenicity of diesel exhaust.[142], [143], [144] Numerous animal and bioassay/genotoxic tests have been done on diesel exhaust.[145], [146]. Also, case-control and cohort studies have been conducted on railroad engine exposures [147],[148],[149] in addition to studies on truck workers.[150], [151],[152]. Also, there are numerous other epidemiologic studies including some studying mine workers and fire fighters.153, 154

For the EPA Diesel HAD, EPA reviewed 22 epidemiologic studies in detail, finding increased lung cancer risk in 8 out of 10 cohort studies and 10 out of 12 case-control studies. Relative risk for lung cancer associated with exposure range from 1.2 to 2.6. In addition, two meta-analyses of occupational studies of diesel exhaust and lung cancer have estimated the smoking-adjusted relative risk of 1.35 and 1.47, examining 23 and 30 studies, respectively.[157],[158]

That is, these two studies show an overall increase in lung cancer for the exposed groups of 35 percent and 47 percent compared with the groups not exposed to diesel exhaust. In the EPA Diesel HAD, EPA selected 1.4 as a reasonable estimate of occupational relative risk for further
analysis.

As described in the Diesel HAD, these studies include some of the same health effects reported for ambient PM, such as respiratory symptoms (cough, labored breathing, chest tightness, wheezing), and chronic respiratory disease (cough, phlegm, chronic bronchitis and suggestive evidence for decreases in pulmonary function). Symptoms of immunological effects such as wheezing and increased allergenicity are also seen. Studies in rodents, especially rats, show the potential for human inflammatory effects in the lung and consequential lung tissue damage from chronic diesel exhaust inhalation exposure.(my note – this document has some other information which includes known studies on humans which indicated these same symptoms.)

The Diesel HAD notes that acute or short-term exposure to diesel exhaust can cause acute irritation (e.g., eye, throat, bronchial), neurophysiological symptoms (e.g., lightheadedness, nausea), and respiratory symptoms (cough, phlegm). There is also evidence for an immunologic effect such as the exacerbation of allergenic responses to known allergens and asthma-like symptoms.164,165,166,167 The Diesel HAD lists numerous other studies as well. Also, as discussed in more detail previously, in addition to its
contribution to ambient PM inventories, diesel PM is of special concern because it has been associated with an increased risk of lung cancer.

The Diesel HAD also briefly summarizes health effects associated with ambient PM and the EPA’s annual NAAQS of 15 :g/m3. There is a much more extensive body of human data showing a wide spectrum of adverse health effects associated with exposure to ambient PM, of which diesel exhaust is an important component.

As indicated earlier, a number of recent studies have associated living near roadways with adverse health effects. Two of the studies cited earlier will be mentioned again here as examples of the type of work that has been done. A Dutch study (discussed earlier by G. Hoek et al., 2002) of a population of people 55-69 years old found that there was an elevated risk of heart and lung related mortality among populations living near high traffic roads.

Diesel particulate exposures have been measured for a number of occupational groups over various years but generally for more recent years (1980s and later) rather than earlier years.

The highest exposure to diesel PM is for workers in coal mines and noncoal mines, which are as high a 1,280 :g/m3, as discussed in the Diesel HAD. The National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) has estimated a total of 1,400,000 workers are occupationally exposed to diesel exhaust from on-road and nonroad equipment.

Many measured or estimated occupational exposures are for on-road diesel engines and some are for school buses.[185], [186], [187], [188].

Mobile sources as a whole account for 78 percent of the total benzene emissions in the nation.

Benzene is an aromatic hydrocarbon that is present as a gas in both exhaust and evaporative emissions from mobile sources. Benzene accounts for one to two percent of the exhaust hydrocarbons, expressed as a percentage of total organic gases (TOG), in diesel engines.[198], [199]
For gasoline-powered highway vehicles, the benzene fraction of TOG varies depending on control technology (e.g., type of catalyst) and the levels of benzene and other aromatics in the fuel, but is generally higher than for diesel engines, about three to five percent.

Nonroad sources as a whole account for an average of about 17 percent of ambient benzene in urban areas and about 9 percent of ambient benzene in
rural areas across the U.S, in the 1996 NATA assessment.

The EPA’s IRIS database lists benzene as a known human carcinogen (causing leukemia) by all routes of exposure.201 It is associated with additional health effects including chromosomal changes in human and animal cells and increased proliferation of bone marrow cells in mice.[202], [203]

A number of adverse noncancer health effects including blood disorders, such as preleukemia and aplastic anemia, have also been associated with long-term occupational exposure to benzene.

Inhalation is the major source of human exposure to benzene in the occupational and nonoccupational setting.

At least half of this exposure is attributable to gasoline vapors and automotive emissions. Long-term inhalation occupational exposure to benzene has been shown to cause cancer of the hematopoetic (blood cell) system. Among these are acute nonlymphocytic leukemia,I chronic lymphocytic leukemia and possibly multiple myeloma

(primary malignant tumors in the bone marrow), although the evidence for the latter has decreased with more recent studies.204,205 Leukemias, lymphomas, and other tumor types have been observed in experimental animals exposed to benzene by inhalation or oral administration.
Exposure to benzene and/or its metabolites has also been linked with chromosomal changes in humans and animals206 and increased proliferation of mouse bone marrow cells.207

***

My Note –

When the recent hearings occurred on the health risks to workers and coastal populations in communities along the Gulf of Mexico of the crude oil in the Gulf of Mexico to those populations – the members of the various agencies acted as though they aren’t very sure that there are any studies of such things and that respirators are not required. Then what is the information above – which is only one piece and there are certainly others that are even more recent as well – but the studies’ results didn’t change because the oil companies decided it should be something else.

There is more information on this document and others that suggest the agency representatives of that hearing earlier this week – were either lying or misinformed or intentionally misleading the public and legislators. As far as I can tell, there is no way that the people on Grande Isle, for instance – could be sitting in anything closely resembling clean air. Is it possible with crude oil and oil mixed with dispersants and increased soot and increased diesel exhaust and increased particulate matter in the air all the way around them?

What do they think people will do if they know the truth? Wouldn’t it be possible to simply help people make the necessary actions to be protected – from using hepa filters on the air conditioners to using respirators outside?

Or better yet, getting up out of the way of the health risks of staying in the fumes that are known to be dangerous, sickening and carcin0genic?

– cricketdiane

***

What is genuinely bizarre to me is the idea that Republicans are admitting that they have known all this time that relying on foreign oil was making our nation vulnerable and yet they never diversified to support other forms of energy and fuel>

What is also genuinely bizarre to me is that the people in authority who should know better and who would otherwise be getting people out of harm’s way are pretending the harm not only doesn’t exist, but then pretending that others should come into the area for their vacations too. There are pictures on CNN – have they not seen them? Do they get cable?

I kind of wish they could all get their boats and come up to Georgia to fish but really I don’t think we can eat any of the fish from our rivers, lakes, streams and some of our coastal areas here already so it wouldn’t do them much good. Its been that way a long time and the air in Atlanta as well as many of our outlying rural areas make 1969 Los Angeles air look clean in comparison so I’m not sure they would be trading up. I think I heard there are fish in Minnesota that can still be eaten but I’d look it up first before believing it.

Apparently Wall Street Harvard-trained guys and gals have been teaching the physics about controlled burns to the EPA and Coast Guard – what goes up, just stays up and keeps going up. And, the health agencies must have been taught by the oil industry that it all just disappears magically after awhile with no harm to anyone and where something dies with oil in its mouth doesn’t mean that oil contributed to that deadness.

Somebody needs to tell those folks that the shrimp, the oysters, the clams and the other sea animals are dead and the beds where they lived are poisoned now. They are going to be dead for a long, long time and if any are alive in any measure, they will be poisoned for a long, long, long, long time. It would be kinder than letting them believe the pretense that it will all be fixed within a few years. It won’t. I wouldn’t eat any of it and I wouldn’t let anyone I know eat any of it – not even five years from now. I’d stay away from anything that has come from that area of the Gulf of Mexico ocean waters because it has been poisoned with crude oil petroleum, petroleum mixed with dispersants and diesel / petroleum soot and chemicals. I wouldn’t eat fish or shrimp or crab that had been boiled in gasoline either.

I’m sorry it is that way but they decided to host an oil industry that could destroy it and it destroyed it. They knew that was a possible event and that is what has happened. The dead birds can’t be told to get up and live. The dead sea turtles can’t be brought back. And, the oyster beds, shrimping areas and other ocean life zones which used to house and nurture that wildlife are now poisoned right now today and forever beyond this day.

As far as I know, the oil industry and the Republican Party included, have yet to make one dolphin in the world, and have yet to create one shark, whale, oyster, shrimp or sea cucumber for that matter and not one jellyfish, octopus or squid or seahorse or starfish or reef coral has been made, designed, breathed into life or re-made by them either.

Personally, I think that states along the Gulf Coast are not ready for what is coming. There are nine ways to Sunday that this is a disaster and an increasing disaster expanding by the hour and by the day. None of the things being used are even in the neighborhood of being close to fixing any of it. The only thing that is assured and is an absolutely known quantity, is that it will affect the health of people who live in those areas and those who are working in boats standing six feet above the spill where the fumes are concentrated. There is no where to go for safety to get clean air. They aren’t protected with respirators and other breathing equipment and eye protection. They will be hurt by it for many years and they aren’t leaving the area. So, that is a given.

Long before the storms come, things could be done – but they aren’t doing them. State legislators are sitting up in there mahogany covered offices with their nice desks and air conditioning while making decisions to maneuver money away from where it is needed most to do something else with it and for some reason screaming about getting more money. They could bring the best of their minds and resources to bear upon the situation and implement those things that would work – but they aren’t doing that any more than the marine spill response contractors are doing it. Their intentions are something else.

And, a day will come – whether it is two years from now, or two months from now or five years from today – when they will know what was made worse by doing it that way. At that point, these contractors and legislators and lobbyists and public relations specialists and political policy makers will be enjoying some Caribbean cruise or Mediterranean vacation – not uprooted by this disaster at all. But they will know and it will haunt them. I sure wish they would do something different right now – but that seems far removed from the reality they enjoy.